“You have nothing to lose but spare chains.” The great road trip of Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov across America

“One-Storey America” is the least studied work of Ilf and Petrov; much of their narrative remains behind the scenes or between the lines. Archival research in recent years has corrected our ideas about the goals and significance of the famous journey of Ilf and Petrov across America in the mid-1930s.