Yevgeny Petrovich Kataev

Yevgeny Petrov

Yevgeny Petrovich Kataev ( Russian Евгений Петрович Катаев ; born November 30 ^{. Jul} / 13. December  1903 ^{. Greg} in Odessa , † 2. July 1942 ) was a Russian - Soviet writer. He was mainly known by his pseudonym Yevgeny Petrov (Russian Евгений Петров ).

Life

Katajew worked with Ilya Ilf (1897-1937) under the pseudonym Yevgeny Petrov in the 1920s for satirical newspapers. Both became known through their novels Twelve Chairs and The Golden Calf , which they wrote together as Ilf and Petrow , in which the cunning deceiver Ostap Bender is the main character. During the Second World War, Yevgeny Petrov worked as a journalist (war correspondent). On one of the trips made in this capacity, he was killed in a plane crash in 1942.

Kataev's brother was the equally successful playwright and novelist Valentin Kataev .

Trivia

The short film Envelope (2012) with Kevin Spacey is based on events allegedly experienced by Katajew. Since the age of six he has been writing letters to invented people in other countries who always come back as "undeliverable". His last letter to New Zealand, however, is answered; the recipient claims to have actually met Kataev.

Works by the duo Ilf and Petrow

• Двенадцать стульев . Novel. 1928 ( German  twelve chairs ; numerous film adaptations, including thirteen chairs ).
• Светлая личность . Narrative. 1928 (German figure of light ).
• 1001 день, или Новая Шахерезада . Cycle of satirical short stories. 1929 (German. A thousand and one days or the new Scheherazade ).
• Необыкновенные истории из жизни города Колоколамска . Cycle of satirical short stories. 1929 (German Extraordinary Stories from the Life of the City of Radbrech ).
• Золотой телёнок . Novel. 1931 (German: The golden calf or The Hunt for the Million ).
• Одноэтажная Америка . Travel journal. 1936 (German single storey America ).
• Тоня . Novella. 1937 (German hunting ground ).

German editions (selection)

• Relationships are everything . Stories and feature sections. Verlag Volk und Welt , Berlin 1981.
• The golden calf or The Hunt for the Million . Fischer-Taschenbuch , 1988, ISBN 3-596-28263-2 .
  • New edition: translated into German by Thomas Reschke : Die Andere Bibliothek , Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-8477-0340-2 .
• Twelve chairs . Luchterhand , 2003, ISBN 3-630-62067-1 .
• The single-storey America: A journey with photos of Ilja Ilf in black and white and letters from America . Translated from the Russian by Helmut Ettinger. With a preliminary remark by Alexandra Ilf and a foreword by Felicitas Hoppe . Eichborn Verlag, Die Other Bibliothek series, Frankfurt am Main, 2011, ISBN 978-3-8218-6239-2 , 2 volumes in one cassette

Works by Yevgeny Petrovich Katajew (aka Petrow )

• The Island of Peace (Ostrow mira) . A comedy in four acts. Henschel, Berlin 1947 ( story of an English millionaire who fled to an idyllic island in times threatened by war, but where crude oil was found, which brought an abrupt end to his seclusion ; German by Georgia Tanewa).

literature

• Ilja Ehrenburg : People - Years - Lives (Memoirs). Munich 1962, special edition Munich 1965, Volume II 1923–1941, ISBN 3-463-00512-3 , portrait of Ilf / Petrow pp. 309–314

Web links

Commons : Evgeny Petrov  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Jewgeni Petrowitsch Katajew in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Evgeni Petrowitsch Katajew  in the German Digital Library
• Yevgeni Petrov in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Ilf and Petrow on lib.ru (Russian)
• Annotation: "Twelve chairs"