City of Thieves

CITY OF THIEVES; David Benioff; New York: Viking, 2008; 258pp. Fiction.

One suspects David Benioff's story of Lev Beniov in the Siege of Leningrad has a biographical component, especially since the story takes the form of a journalist interviewing his grandfather.
Lev's story begins presciently: "You have never been so hungry. You have never been so cold."
At seventeen, Lev refuses to leave Leningrad (of "Piter" from the pre-Communist St. Petersburg days) when his mother and sister flee because he thinks it is a man's duty to stand
and fight, and he is the commandant of the neighborhood fire brigade. When he and two friends break curfew to check out the body of a frozen German airman who has parachuted into their
neighborhood, Lev is arrested and would have been shot except that he and another young soldier are promised their freedom (and a ration card) if they can find a dozen eggs for the NKVD general's daughter within five days. Lev and Kolya's search inside and outside Leningrad is the basis for an extraordinary tale of courage, a growing friendship, the brutal vulgarity and preoccupations of a soldier's life; the horrors of starvation and of cannibalism; the humanity and kindness of the desperate and desolate. A good deal of gallows humor and a bittersweet ending add to the pleasure of this memorable, deeply touching narrative.

LW