City of Thieves

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.

"Author and screenwriter Benioff follows up The 25th Hour with this hard-to-put-down novel based on his grandfather's stories about surviving WWII in Russia. Having elected to stay in Leningrad during the siege, 17-year-old Lev Beniov is caught looting a German paratrooper's corpse. The penalty for this infraction (and many others) is execution. But when Colonel Grechko confronts Lev and Kolya, a Russian army deserter also facing execution, he spares them on the condition that they acquire a dozen eggs for the colonel's daughter's wedding cake. Their mission exposes them to the most ghoulish acts of the starved populace and takes them behind enemy lines to the Russian countryside. There, Lev and Kolya take on an even more daring objective: to kill the commander of the local occupying German forces. A wry and sympathetic observer of the devastation around him, Lev is an engaging and self-deprecating narrator who finds unexpected reserves of courage at the crucial moment and forms an unlikely friendship with Kolya, a flamboyant ladies' man who is coolly reckless in the face of danger. Benioff blends tense adventure, a bittersweet coming-of-age and an oddly touching buddy narrative to craft a smart crowd-pleaser." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

The 900-day German siege of Leningrad (1941-43) was arguably the most punishing sustained assault on a city in history. The Russians lost roughly one civilian per minute for 2 1/2 years straight. Yet despite their dwindling supplies, their strategic stubbornness and their policy of purging some of their most loyal comrades, the Red Army held firm. "The arithmetic was brutal, but brutal arithmetic always... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) worked in Russia's favor," reflects Lev, the prematurely hardened 17-year-old hero of David Benioff's second novel, "City of Thieves."

Benioff's book opens inauspiciously: A Los Angeles screenwriter is in need of material for an autobiographical think piece. Bored by his personal history, he decides to tap into his family's during a visit to Florida, where he interviews his grandparents about their experiences on the Eastern Front. The grandfather, Lev Beniov, typically a man of few words, fills a week's worth of tape. What follows purports to be his story, though when it comes to gaps and inconsistencies, Lev grants his grandson carte blanche. "You're a writer. Make it up," he exhorts.

In the hands of another author, this would be an invitation to recklessness. Novels set in Soviet Russia have lately had a tendency to ballast their black comedy with zany narrative high jinks or social commentary pitched toward the present. Witness last year's "House of Meetings" by Martin Amis, which featured another Lev and confused the horrors of the Gulag with the comparably picayune problems of the bedroom. Benioff intends something more modest but ultimately more moving. "City of Thieves" is a coming-of-age story brilliantly amplified by its war-torn backdrop.

When we first meet Lev, he has nothing but strikes against him. The son of a minor Jewish poet, he's already considered an enemy of the people before he's sent to Leningrad's prison for looting a dead German paratrooper. There he shares a cell with Kolya, a chronically constipated local Lothario, who claims to have been unjustly charged with desertion after he left his regiment to defend his dissertation on an obscure Russian novelist. Instead of immediate execution, a Red Army colonel offers the cellmates a chance at redemption: They must find a dozen eggs somewhere in the city to use for his daughter's wedding cake. It's an order that makes the missions in "The Dirty Dozen" and "Saving Private Ryan" seem eminently reasonable, but this, after all, is Mother Russia.

Kolya and Lev face a series of hair-raising terrors as they traipse around the freezing city. "Just because there's bad news doesn't mean there's good news, too," Kolya chides, and that might as well be their motto. The two fast friends encounter urban cannibals, snacks made from bookbinding glue, dogs strapped with dynamite to blow up Panzer tanks and, most hauntingly, a makeshift brothel on the outskirts of the city, where one of the girls has had her feet sawed off by a sadistic Nazi commander. "Everything about the war was ridiculous," Lev thinks: "the Germans' barbarity, the Party's propaganda, the crossfire of incendiary bullets that lit the nighttime sky."

The plot jolts into high gear when Lev and Kolya agree to avenge the Russian girl and ambush the German officers in the brothel. The same night they unexpectedly fall in with a motley crew of Russian partisans, who have been tracking Cmdr. Abendroth, the head of the Nazi death squads. Soon the nervously virginal Lev is receiving tactical advice from Kolya on the crush he's developed for Nina, a tomboy sharpshooter in their ranks. Everything for Lev — his budding romance, his friendship, his eggs — will boil down to a chess game between him and Abendroth, whom Benioff depicts as the dual apotheosis of Nazi sophistication and inhumanity.

At times Lev and Kolya seem too free from the strictures of Soviet ideology: They each come equipped with an improbably deep understanding of their society. But for the most part, they and the minor characters satisfyingly inhabit the historical wreckage, and Kolya and Abendroth are especially memorable. But Benioff's finest achievement in "City of Thieves" has been to banish all possible pretensions from his novel, which never wears its research on its sleeve, and to deliver a rough-and-tumble tale that clenches humor, savagery and pathos squarely together on the same page.

Reviewed by Thomas Meaney, who also reviews for the Wall Street Journal and the New York Observer, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review)

"[G]lorious...a wild action-packed quest, and much else besides....This gut-churning thriller will sweep you along and, with any luck, propel Benioff into bestseller land." Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

"A high-spirited adventure, Benioff's second novel...takes more than a little poetic license. When Benioff tells his grandfather that a few things don't make sense in the narrative, his reply: You're a writer. Make it up." Booklist'

"With deftly sly humor, respect for the agony of warfare, and dialog that elevates the boys-to-men story beyond its typical male ribaldry, this second novel by screenwriter Benioff deserves a bright spotlight..." Library Journal (Starred Review)

"[S]plendid....By listening carefully — and making the rest up — Benioff has produced a funny, sad, and thrilling novel. (Grade: A-)" Entertainment Weekly

"David Benioff's second novel...features a snappy plot, a buoyant friendship, a quirky courtship, an assortment of menacing bad guys, an atmosphere that flickers between grainy realism and fairy-tale grotesquerie and a grim but irrepressible sense of humor." Los Angeles Times

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.

From the critically acclaimed author of The 25th Hour and When the Nines Roll Over, a captivating novel about war, courage, survival — and a remarkable friendship that ripples across a lifetime.

During the Nazis’ brutal siege of Leningrad, Lev Beniov is arrested for looting and thrown into the same cell as a handsome deserter named Kolya. Instead of being executed, 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 Soviet 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 through the dire lawlessness of Leningrad and behind enemy lines to find the impossible.

By turns insightful and funny, thrilling and terrifying, City of Thieves is a gripping, cinematic World War II adventure and an intimate coming-of-age story with an utterly contemporary feel for how boys become men.

David Benioff is an author and screenwriter. His first novel, The 25th Hour, was adapted into a popular feature film. His short story collection When the Nines Roll Over received critical acclaim.