"City of Thieves" by David Benioff (Viking, ISBN
9780670018703, $24.95)
Lev Beniov has been arrested for looting, and in 1941 Leningrad, that's
punished by summary execution, as is nearly every crime—it's not as if there
were supplies to feed prisoners, when the population was barely surviving on
sugar-saturated mud from beneath a bombed-out confectioner's or "library
candy," obtained by boiling down book bindings. But instead of shooting him
on sight, the NKVD throws him in a cell with Kolya, a chatty,
literature-obsessed deserter, and the two of them are offered an unusual
reprieve: if they can find a dozen eggs for a colonel's daughter's wedding
cake, they'll go free. Easier said than done, of course, but to save their
own lives, the two boys set off on a tragedy- and humor-filled quest.
I told my dad I was reading a novel that took place during the siege of
Leningrad, and that it was purportedly funny, and he pointed out that said
siege was "one of the least funny things every to happen." He's absolutely
right, but that's what makes "City of Thieves" successful: by stripping down
the epic, three-years' atrocity that was the starvation and destruction of
one of the most cosmopolitan cities in Europe to a slightly implausible but
compelling tale of two very different young men (based on his grandfather's
actual wartime experiences), Benioff is able to share the lurid details
without sacrificing the smaller picture. Cannibalism and torture share the
pages with smut and poetry. Don't miss Kolya's opinion of "War & Peace"
heroine Natasha Rostov.
David Benioff, it turns out, wrote the screenplay for Wolfgang Petersen's
hilariously overwrought and thoroughly enjoyable "Troy" — which, despite my
classical-scholar cred, I loved every minute of. Eric Bana made a great
Hector. "City of Thieves," however, has things like "characterization" and
"wit" to recommend it. I don't know if I'd go see another Benioff-penned
movie (OK, besides "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," due out in 2009), but I'd
surely read another novel.
Review by
Anna Perleberg,
June 5, 2008
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