"A remarkably funny book written by a remarkable pair of collaborators."--New York Times

Ostap Bender, the "grand strategist," is a con man on the make in the Soviet Union during the New Economic Policy (NEP) period. He's obsessed with getting one last big score--a few hundred thousand will do--and heading for Rio de Janeiro, where there are "a million and a half people, all of them wearing white pants, without exception."

When Bender hears the story of Alexandr Koreiko, an "undercover millionaire"--no Soviet citizen was allowed to openly hoard so much capital--the chase...