Review of City of Thieves by David Benioff

*City of Thieves* by David Benioff (2008). Published by Viking / Penguin.

I found out about this book through social media, like so many other books I’ve been reading lately. I will admit, at first when I saw the premise I thought I wasn’t going to be into this book. It reminded me of the other classics I’ve read throughout my education career, and that instinctively turned me off the plot of this one.

But then I checked it out of the library just to give it a chance, since I thought the premise was kind of interesting, and I’m pretty glad I did that.

Sometimes in life the best books and content we consume tends to come out of nowhere. When we even travel to a place where we thought we would never go or do things we would never do, it leads to opportunities for growth.

I’m glad to pick up a lot of books I would never give a chance otherwise, and although not all of them I genuinely enjoy, I think it’s a learning experience. I believe eventually a book like City of Thieves will become a classic.

Alright, I’ve rambled enough in the introduction. Let’s get on with the review.

Two men are sent on an impossible task in the Soviet Union, just as the Germans close in during World War II.

Our protagonist in City of Thieves is Lev. He’s sixteen or seventeen, and chose to stay in the city of Leningrad after his mother and sister fled the town. His father was an influential Jewish poet who wrote a collection with the native name of the city, which ended up getting him killed.

But Lev has a romanticized notion of toughing it out in the midst of war, and in the beginning of the novel, he’s with his comrades slowly starving because of the lack of food and the severe cold. Things change when they come across a fallen German soldier one night, and when they steal the dead man’s alcohol, the Soviet soldiers catch them in the act.

Everyone gets away except Lev, who helped the girl of the group climb over the fence, but he could not get over in time himself. He’s thrown into jail with a handsome stranger, Kolya, and the two wait for their deaths to come.

It seems for sure they are going to be executed the next morning, but when they come face to face with the general who’s about to end it all for them, he shows them an act of mercy—but with a catch. He ends up promising them the chance to live, but only if they manage to collect a dozen eggs for him by Thursday. It is Sunday, and he wants to make a cake for his daughter’s upcoming wedding.

He hands the two a card saying their mission signed off by him, then he sends them off. This seems like an impossible task because of how everyone in the city lacks basic necessities to begin with, but the two end up having some confidence, especially Kolya.

They go off onto the streets to find information, Kolya spending the money the general gave them on useless knick-knacks like candy make from the wax of books, and a burly man lures them into their home with the promise of information. As it turns out, the guy is a cannibal and his wife and he try to eat the two men.

They escape and head to some of Koyla’s university friend’s home. Lev listens to Kolya have sex with one of the girls, and they follow the lead of an old man who has chickens on the roof in a building. When they ascend the staircase, they discover the old man has died, and his grandson guards his corpse and the only chicken left standing.

It is obvious the boy is dying, and he ends up giving the two men the chicken before deciding to succumb to his fate. They go back to the apartment, realize it’s a rooster and incapable of laying eggs, and come to the realization that they need to go behind enemy lines to the villages in order to find these eggs.

So they travel by foot and do so. Along the way, they end up meeting a bunch of well-fed Russian girls who are basically sex prostitutes for the Nazis, and help them escape their situation, although they now will be left without food in the cold depths of the Soviet Union.

There are some really ugly, brutal scenes in this section of the book as well, and I got really queasy when I was reading them—but I felt like I couldn’t skip this because for some people in the world, they can’t skip such things. It’s such a privilege to do that.

They end up captive with some other Russian soldiers, they escape, and ultimately the crew finds the eggs they need. Heading back to Leningrad, Kolya is shot in the butt by Russian soldiers and dies from his wounds. As Lev delivers the eggs by himself, shocked at the death of his friend, the general reveals he had already found dozens of other eggs at this point and didn’t even need them.

Thus the novel ends with Lev being given two soldier ration cards—one for himself, and the other was supposed to be Kolya’s. The sniper they had run into and ended up escaping with earlier becomes Lev’s wife.

Overall Thoughts

This is a really brutal book, but it shows the extent of the Nazi and Soviet brutality. There’s corruption shown all over the city of Leningrad throughout the book, and how the people are starving because of the war but the men like the general are able to stay fat cats because of their positions of power.

Lev himself is fairly naive at the beginning of the novel and romanticizing everything about it until he’s straight up starving and desperate, but after he goes through this journey, he’s a completely changed man. There’s nothing he could do that could unwind the trauma he faced during this time.

This is an important book to read at the end of the day, as there’s so many themes that could have lessons to learn from for any kind of reader. War is full of suffering.

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