City of Thieves: A Novel | David Benioff

City of Thieves: A Novel | David Benioff | An Amazing Story

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City of Thieves: A...

	City of Thieves: A Novel David Benioff Viking Adult, 2008 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 41 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

As wise and funny as it is thrilling and original?the story of two young men on an impossible adventure

A writer visits his retired grandparents in Florida to document their experience during the infamous siege of Leningrad. His grandmother won?t talk about it, but his grandfather reluctantly consents. The result is the captivating odyssey of two young men trying to survive against desperate odds.

Lev Beniov considers himself ?built for deprivation.? He?s small, smart, and insecure, a Jewish virgin too young for the army, who spends his nights working as a volunteer firefighter with friends from his building. When a dead German paratrooper lands in his street, Lev is caught looting the body and dragged to jail, fearing for his life. He shares his cell with the charismatic and grandiose Kolya, a handsome young soldier arrested on desertion charges. Instead of the standard bullet in the back of the head, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives by complying with an outrageous directive: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful colonel to use in his daughter?s wedding cake. In a city cut off from all supplies and suffering unbelievable deprivation, Lev and Kolya embark on a hunt to find the impossible. A search that takes them through the dire lawlessness of Leningrad and the devastated surrounding countryside creates an unlikely bond between this earnest, lust-filled teenager and an endearing lothario with the gifts of a conman. Set within the monumental events of history, City of Thieves is an intimate coming-of-age tale with an utterly contemporary feel for how boys become men.

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Terrific and Authentic

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The two main characters were extremely well fleshed out. I found the historic references to the German siege interesting and subsequently purchased "The Siege of Stalingrad" to find out more about that aspect of WWII.

An Amazing Story

This book was amazing. The siege of Leningrad took over 900 days before it was finally broken. The war in the east is much neglected here in the USA, but as desperate as it was, the war in the west was nothing as brutal or costly as the war in Russia. The numbers speak for themselves. In the west, there is a dearth of lore about the eastern front. This book provides a day to day account of life during the siege of Leningrad. It is delightfully short on polemic. Somehow, the characters can find some humor, even in this most dire of situations (city surrounded, starving, and daily pummeling by effective German artillery, about to be shot by the NKVD).

The characters were completely believable, and quite likeable, in different ways. I heartily recommend this book. It is sad and joyous at the same time. I hope that the author will write more.

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One of the best recent books

Simply put, this is one of the best books I've read in years.

I was born in Leningrad soon after the war, and grew up with many blockade stories, and can also picture in my mind the streets where the events of the book took place. The book is full of tragedies, but this is the way things really were.
One can only wonder whether the story of the authors grandfather is true, or the author's invention, and if the latter is the case, how did his grandparents manage to get out of the Stalinist nightmare during or right after the war. They should've been very lucky to survive both Hitler and Stalin...
It's so wonderful to see the bright new star of the American literature.
I'm loking forward to many more great books from him.

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I am the yegg man

David Benioff's "City of Thieves" is something of a coming-of-age tale with a twist. The twist is the fact that the tale is set in the besieged city of Leningrad in January, 1941. It is a city at war surrounded by the German army. The city is under martial law but its people are starving and fighting for food and even cannibalism is the inevitable result. The two `heroes' of the story, Lev Beniov and Kolya Vlasov are each picked up by the Red Army for crimes against the state. Lev is caught looting (taking the knife from a dead German soldier). Kolya, already a soldier is picked up and accused of desertion. Both crimes are grounds for immediate execution but the two boys are thrown together and given a `secret mission' by a Red Army officer, Colonel Grechko, who agrees to release them on the condition that they steal two dozen eggs in time for his daughter's wedding. The two dozen eggs are essential to make her a wedding cake. If they fail, they will be hunted down and shot. And with that bizarre quest ringing in their ears they are let go and sent out to scour Leningrad and the surrounding countryside in a quest for enough eggs to save their lives.

I liked City of Thieves for a number of reasons. First, Benioff does an excellent job setting the story up. It begins as a narrative of his own life as a writer and then evolves into getting his grandfather Lev to tell him the story of his experience during the war. All the author knows is that "my grandfather, the knife fighter, killed two Germans before he was eighteen". The story unfolds as a narrative told to his grandson. Second, the characters of Lev and Kolya were well-drawn and engaging even if Lev and Kolya did play into a couple of stereotypes, Lev the shy, quiet, intelligent Russian of Jewish descent is scrawny, short, and horribly shy around girls and seems to be able to do no more than dream wistfully of some dreamlike romantic encounters when he gets older. Kolya is handsome, tall, athletic and an accomplished Romeo. He has, if even some of his stories are true, become quite accomplished in the art of seduction. Third, the plot is well designed and well thought out. This seemingly bizarre search for eggs takes them through the dangerous streets of Leningrad into German-occupied territory where they meet up with a local group of partisans. Each story unfolds as a self-contained vignette but each has its own climactic moment that propels the reader into the next chapter. Last, Benioff has done an excellent job in creating a historically accurate picture of Leningrad during its siege. I've read a lot of non-fiction accounts of life in Leningrad, Stalingrad, and Moscow during the early years of WWII and nothing in this novel strikes me as out of touch with life during the siege including the Colonel's request for two dozen eggs.

The outcome of the story may be thought of by some as predictable but I found the ending more than satisfying even if some of the `results' did not take me totally by surprise.

I think City of Thieves is an excellent story and well worth reading. L. Fleisig

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Enjoyable, Crowd-Pleasing Book

I've never heard of David Benioff before, but he's apparently a well-known Hollywood screenwriter, writing the screenplays for films such as TROY and the upcoming WOVLERINE movie. He is also married to actress Amanda Peet, which makes him a modern-day oddity: a fiction writer who is something of a media celebrity. I must admit that Benioff's fame made me somewhat skeptical of his writing talents. However, I ended up being pleasantly surprised by his storytelling skills in his new novel, CITY OF THIEVES.

CITY OF THIEVES is a historical novel that deals with the German siege of Leningrad in the early 1940s. It is told from the perspective of two young Russian men (one Jewish, one not), who are ordered to find a dozen eggs for a powerful colonel to use in his daughter's wedding cake. Given the fact that most of the residents of the city are near starvation, this is a near-impossible task for the two young men to complete. The novel deals with the young men's weeklong journey across a nation devastated by war and poverty, as well as their developing relationship.

This novel is well written, but quite formulaic. For example, it's easy to predict that the two young men, who are opposites of one another, will eventually become friends by the end of the book. I also found the ending of CITY OF THIEVES to be on the cornball side, containing several plot twists that most experienced readers will spot way in advance.

Still, I don't mind predictable plotlines as long as they are well executed, and Benioff knows how to tell a good story. The two main characters are quite likable, and the story is well-paced and contains a lot of suspenseful moments. In particular, Benioff does an exemplary job with the setting, re-creating the desperation of daily life in Leningrad during the German siege. I know very little about this period of history, and CITY OF THIEVES made me interested in learning more about it.

In the end, I found CITY OF THIEVES to be a highly enjoyable read. If you're looking for a short, highly readable novel that will tug at your heartstrings a little bit, this is a good choice.

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