City of Thieves: A Novel | David Benioff

City of Thieves: A Novel | David Benioff | One of the best recent books

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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 54 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

What a pleasure!

Not often does a novel cover all the bases: wonderful storytelling, delicious language, well-drawn characters (both sympathetic and otherwise), and a history lesson thrown in. Difficult to watch this thoughtful tale come to an end because I was so enjoying the ride, although I actually might have preferred that the last chapter not be included--sometimes a little mystery is a good thing. On the other hand, if this really was based on the memories of the author's grandfather (as implied in the first portion of the novel), perhaps Mr. Beniov felt the rest of the story needed to be told.

Another excellent recent novel about the siege of Leningrad is "The Madonnas of Leningrad" by Debra Dean--these two will teach you more about this piece of history than you ever learned in school.

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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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When I finished I felt stunned

City of Thieves is a remarkable book. It is a pretty short book that has an impact beyond its page numbers.
Set in Russia during WWII during the Nazi invasion of Leningrad, the story follows a lovable Red Army soldier and a 17 year old boy who cross paths with Nazis to fulfill a strange quest. The story is by turns thoughtful as well as gruesome, heartbreaking as well as humorous.

Benioff is a gifted storyteller, with a straightforward writing style that lays it all out. The story is linear with no time jumping or other annoying literary props. The story just doesn't need them. The characters are revealed in their human imperfection with dialog that is realistic and at times very funny. The scenes are descriptive and intense. This may be a perfect novel.

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Why isn't this book on the best-seller list?

The publicity director at Viking should be ashamed. If I had been skimming my BOMC catalogue with my usual nonchalance, I never would have noticed CITY OF THIEVES, and I would've missed one of the best books I've read this year. It should be at the top of the New York Times best-seller list.

CITY OF THIEVES starts out rather slow, with a deserter and "thief" being sent to find a dozen eggs for an NKVD colonel's daughter's wedding during the siege of Leningrad. Part of the appeal is the likeability of the two characters, seventeen-year-old chess wiz Lev Beniov and Kolya, a handsome young soldier who has been accused of deserting his army unit. They meet each other at the Crossing, a Leningrad prison.

It's the little things that make the book. Lev has a big nose and he's sensitive about it. Kolya is always writing in his journal. It's only later that we learn he's writing a novel entitled "The Courtyard Hound." He's also extremely funny. The third major character is a partisan sniper named Vika. She can shoot the eyes out of an ace of spades at a hundred meters. Of course, Lev falls in love with her almost immediately. Every good book needs a villain as well and CITY OF THIEVES is not lacking in that respect. In this instance it's Sturmbannfuhrer Abendroth who saws the feet off a prostitute who had tried to run away. He's not your one-dimensional villain either. He recognizes almost immediately that Vika is not a young boy, and that Lev, Kolya, and Vika are up to something.

Author David Benioff provides incredible detail. It's kind of hard to believe he knows this much about the siege of Leningrad. It's only in the acknowledgements that we learn he wrote the book with Harrison Salisbury's The 900 Days as his major source. Not only does Benioff know a lot about the siege of Leningrad, he also seems to be a chess expert. This is the first thriller I've read where chess plays an integral part in the climax.

I know nothing about chess and I still found the game involved to be riveting. I know one thing for sure. I'll be checking out Benioff's other novel, the 25th HOUR, which has been made into a Spike Lee movie.

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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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