City of Thieves, by David Benioff, takes the old saw, “Daddy (or, in this case, Grandpa), what did you do during the War?” and runs with it. The book opens with the author asking his grandparents, retired Russians living in Florida, what happened during World War II, a time they’ve never been willing to talk about. This time, however, they talk a lot — and Benioff gets an entire novel out of it.
Now, I haven’t Googled to see how “true” this novel actually is. Who the hell cares? It’s a rousing, cinematic ride (by a noted screenwriter) through the horrors and craziness of the Siege of Leningrad in 1941. The narrator, Lev (Benioff’s grandfather), is caught by the Soviet police after looting the body of a German paratrooper (while looking for food, because there’s none to be had anywhere in the city) and released only under one condition: he and another prisoner, a young soldier named Kolya) are charged with doing the impossible. They have to find a dozen eggs. If they don’t, they go to prison — and the conditions in Leningrad have deteriorated so far that the authorities had stopped even feeding the prisoners, because there’s no food. It is the ultimate damned-if-they-do situation.
It’s a crazy story, with story points and narrative details reminding us that not only does war suck, total war really sucks, and WOW did the Russians have it bad during the war. City of Thieves takes you through Leningrad during wintertime, when you have to fight death, disease, starvation, cannibals, snipers, and the invading German army. You will not be bored reading this book.