City of Thieves: A Novel - Dark Publications

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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
As wise and funny as it is thrilling and originalthe 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 wont 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. Hes 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 daughters 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.

Customer Reviews: Read 62 more reviews...

4 out of 5 stars

Great Book - Not just another book of Historical Fiction May 22, 2008
69 out of 69 found this review helpful

I would never have dreamed that a story set during the WW II Siege of Leningrad could be as engaging and darkly humorous as this book, but the Author has done a fine job of bringing a diverse set of characters to life, two of whom have been given an impossible mission (find a dozen eggs!) in an unbearable situation (the Blockade of Leningrad, and its consequent famine).

I have over a dozen books on the Siege of Leningrad (for a project I'm working on), and I have to say that the Author portrays the siege with accuracy, if not with full depth - in large part because the story is told from the viewpoint of Lev, a 17 year old boy. This doesn't give the reader an omniscient overview of "the big picture", but it certainly provides a very specific perspective on life in and around the city, and one well worth reading.

It's an "impression" of life during the city, and I have to say that with one exception - Lev would have been much hungrier and weaker in real life - a fairly accurate one. Readers of "The 900 Days" will recognize the inspiration for a specific scene, (Hint: Beware of well fed men in a famine) but how the characters react to what happens makes the action their own. And what characters!

The two main characters that carry the book deserve to be remembered as a classic pairing. Their interactions, observations and the journey they take on their absurd quest are one that I will remember for a very long time. Lev, the narrator, will remind most adult men of their own awkward youth. Wry, dry, frustrated and a little plodding, he is enormously sympathetic, while seemingly always in the process of doing a "Straight Man's Slow Burn" in a comedy routine. Kolya, an accidental Red Army deserter, is overly confident, irresistably charming and scatologically minded. Imagine a dirty minded Bugs Bunny come to life as a 6ft tall, Blond hair Blue eyed Russian and you're not too far off. By the end of the story, these two have formed a real bond and friendship - one that seems real, rather than forced for the sake of the story. The supporting characters are all given real weight - you feel that this really could have happened, and that these aren't just puppets the author is manipulating, but real people.

Is it serious? Yes.
Is it a war story? Yes.
Is it funny? Yes.
Is it a coming of age story? Yes.
Is it historically accurate? Yes.

It's simply got quite a lot to offer to any reader. I highly recommend it to both the general reading public and to WWII buffs.

4 out of 5 stars

A good novel from a potentially great novelist June 7, 2008
15 out of 16 found this review helpful

David Benioff's City of Thieves is both engaging and thought-provoking. The four primary characters--the young, naive Lev, the slightly older and lovable Kolya, the frightening but alluring guerilla sniper Vika, and the truly frightening and not at all alluring Einsatskruppen commander Abendroth--are wonderfully crafted with distinct personalities and voices. Benioff has the gift of enabling readers actually to see his characters and the situations in which they find themselves.

And what situations! The setting is the siege of Leningrad. Lev and Kolya escape execution (the former for theft, the latter for desertion) only because a Soviet commander wants nearly impossible to find eggs for his daughter's wedding cake and promises the two youngsters a reprieve if they find him some. Their search brings them face to face with cannibals, slaughtered dogs which have been rigged as anti-tank mines, a dying boy clinging to a rooster, Russian resistance fighters who live and die by the laws of the jungle, and ruthless SS battalions intent on Germanizing Russia by exterminating as many Russians as they can get their hands on.

Yet Benioff's novel isn't merely an action piece. His story invites us to reflect on the absurdity of war (symbolized in the ridiculous quest for eggs in the midst of a brutal conflict that's turned the world upside down) as well as its unspeakable cruelty; on the courage that even timid people can display when under great pressure; and on the human values--friendship, loyalty, and love--that transcend brutality.

Benioff will, I think, be a great novelist someday, but he hasn't quite gotten there yet. Entertaining and thoughtful as City of Thieves is, it's marred, in my judgment, in two ways. The introductory framing chapter, which purports to be an explanation on how the story of Lev came to be told, is contrived and unnecessary. And Kolya's end (without giving it away here) is all too predictable and borders on the melodramatic. But between a less then satisfying start and finish, City of Thieves is a very good tale indeed.

4 out of 5 stars

I am the yegg man August 21, 2008
12 out of 12 found this review helpful

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

5 out of 5 stars

Great Russians May 24, 2008
7 out of 7 found this review helpful

One doesn't usually read the great Russians for the jokes. In "Love and Death", Woody Allen parodies a bleak Tolstoy-esque passage, "Wheat. All there is in life is wheat....Wheat with feathers. Cream of wheat." But a close reader like Woody would recognize the dark humor always bubbling beneath the surface of novels like "The Brothers Karamazov", "A Hero of Our Time", "The Nose", despite the stodgy taint that lingers with their shelving in the Classics section. Do you really want to spend hours with a novelist who doesn't see the humor in the human condition?

I don't. Which is why I adored Benioff's new book. Don't get me wrong, the novel is about two young intellectuals gripped in the throes of the Germans' siege of Leningrad, trying to survive not only this evil but the sweeping persecutions of the Stalinist purges. Not a time nor a place for rollicking comedy. And Benioff's elegiacal descriptions do terrific justice to the nearly-unimaginable hardships that the denizens of Leningrad suffered through during a period when cannibalism came to seem a valid response to hunger. But along with the Russian broodiness that satisfyingly permeates this novel are a wit and wisdom I seek -- and find in my favorite works, Russian or otherwise.

5 out of 5 stars

Unforgettable characters and an unforgettable setting May 25, 2008
7 out of 8 found this review helpful

I received this book for Mother's Day as a gift. Not knowing anything about it, I found myself deeply engrossed in the story - not only the story of these two likeable and funny young men but the horror of the Nazi
seige of Leningrad, a subject that I knew little or nothing about.

Their "adventure" is both funny and tragic but you will love these two. How sad and pathetic war is - that fact never ceases to amaze me, but the human spirit is stronger than anything. This book makes me want to read more about the seige of Leningrad.

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