City of Thieves by David Benioff
At first glance, a novel about two young men who meet in Leningrad during the Nazi siege sounds unpromising. Russian novels (about or by) are not only a little bizarre, but inevitably take place in sub-zero temperatures. City of Thieves is both bizarre and chilly, but utterly engaging.
I have recommended this combination buddy narrative, fairy tale, romance, and war story to men of all ages, book club pals, girlfriends, and my mom, and everyone enjoys it.
The narrator, nebbish Lev Beniov, is arrested for looting. He is tossed into a prison cell with a handsome deserter named Kolya. On the morning of their execution, the Soviet colonel grants them a reprieve. If they can bring him a dozen eggs for his daughter’s wedding cake, he will spare their lives.
This is an impossible task. The citizens of Leningrad are starving. Everything that could be eaten has been (including dogs and cats.) Every stick of furniture in the city has been burned for fuel. The bread rations are a joke, and no one eats more than every few days anyway. Snacks made of bookbinding glue are a full meal. Finding the Holy Grail with a video and detailed map created by Joseph of Arimathea himselfwould be easier than rustling up eggs. But Lev and Koyla don’t have a choice. So with a curfew waiver signed by the colonel and 400 rubles, the two set off.
Lev and Kolya make an odd couple. Lev is the son of a poet who was executed as an enemy of the state. He is timid and intellectual. Kolya is boastful and blond. Koyla embarks on the journey with an annoyingly (in Lev’s mind) cheery attitude. As they encounter sights both ghoulish and pathetic, Koyla tells tired jokes, quotes extensively from The Courtyard Hound, the greatest Russian novel (in Koyla’s mind), and needles Lev about girls. Lev reluctantly joins in and soon the two are conversing about politics, music, chess –everything but the most pressing subject –how to stay alive. As their odyssey goes from worse to worse, Lev and Kolya become not just comrades, but friends.
Author David Benioff is also a successful screenwriter, and the novel has a cinematic quality to it. Lev and Kolya’s not- so -excellent adventure lurches from comedy to tragedy, sometimes in the same paragraph, but never loses its footing.
A combination buddy narrative, fairy tale, romance, and war story, City of Thieves may be my favorite book of the year.