The Twelve Chairs by Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov. Short summary

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Former «bourgeois» Ippolit Vorobyaninov learned from his dying mother-in-law about the treasure she had stitched into one of the living room chairs. Vorobyaninov, together with the adventurer Ostap Bender, sets out on a treasure hunt.

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Ippolit Vorobyaninov, a former socialite and «leader of the nobility,» became an ordinary citizen after the revolution. But one day his dying mother-in-law told Vorobyaninov about the jewels she had hidden in one of the living room chairs. But the set turns out to have been sold off piece by piece at an auction.

Vorobyaninov and his companion, the adventurer and swindler Ostap Bender, set out on a treasure hunt. The heroes have to go through a lot to get to the cherished chairs. Visits to strangers and dubious scams, adventurous employment on a steamship, an unusual chess tournament in a provincial town, and an unforeseen visit to Black Sea resorts await Bender and Kisu Vorobyaninov.

In the end, after a months-long epic, the heroes manage to check out all the chairs but one. The last chair was found in the new club of railway workers. But the diamonds were not found there — the watchman accidentally found them in the chair in spring. The money was used to build a new club building.