“City of Thieves” by David Benioff
I’m trying to cram in as many of The Morning News Tournament of Books contenders as I can before it begins on 3/8, but David Benioff’s City of Thieves jumped the queue by coming into the library about a month ahead of when I needed it for next month’s Books and Bars discussion. While I’m now woefully behind on my ToB OCD (brackets!), I don’t begrudge City of Thieves. It was fabulous.
There are two beginnings. One is by the author, named David who is a screenwriter of superhero mutant movies in Hollywood. He’s asked to write something autobiographical, and instead wants to know what happened to his grandfather during WWII.
David begins:
My grandfather, the knife fighter, killed two Germans before he was eighteen.
And continues in Chapter One with Lev, the grandfather’s story:
You have never been so hungry; you have never been so cold. When we slept, if we slept, we dreamed of the feasts we had carelessly eaten seven months earlier–all that buttered bread, the potato dumplings, the sausages–eaten with disregard, swallowing without tasting, leaving great crumbs on our plates, scraps of fat. In June of 1941, before the Germans came, we thought we were poor. But June seemed like paradise by winter.
Lev is 17 during the siege of Leningrad. His mother and sister have left the city. His father, a poet, was taken by secret police and never returned. With his friends, he watches the night skies for German planes; one evening he sees a paratrooper. What follows leads to his arrest and imminent execution. In a bizarre circumstance, he and another young man, Kolya, are spared and put on a singular mission: find a dozen eggs for the wedding cake of a secret police colonel’s daughter. As Lev and Kolya’s adventure spins out, it becomes many things: a Nazi story, horror tale, buddy journey, tragedy, even romance. Once it gets to a bitter twist of a denouement, City of Thieves has taken on the trappings of a folk story. This is a grand tale, well written and peopled with characters I hope will linger with me. There are many books I like, and admire. This one, I flat-out loved.