In the Soviet Union in 1927, during the NEP era, a former Marshal of the Nobility, Ippolit Matveyevich "Kisa" Vorobyaninov, works as the registrar of marriages and deaths in a sleepy provincial town.

The “smooth operator” and con-man Ostap Bender forces Kisa to become his partner, and they set out to find the chairs.

Roaming all over the Soviet Union in their quest to recover the furniture, they have a series of comic adventures, including living in a students' dormitory with plywood walls, posing as bill-painters on a riverboat to earn passage, bamboozling a village chess-club with promises of an international tournament, and traveling on foot through the mountains of Georgia.

Ostap remains unflappable, and his mastery of human nature eliminates all obstacles, but Vorobyaninov's mental state steadily deteriorates.

Ostap Bender reappears in the book's sequel The Little Golden Calf, despite his apparent death in The Twelve Chairs.