4.0
City of Thieves
ByPublisher Description
From the critically acclaimed author of The 25th Hour and When the Nines Roll Over and co-creator of the HBO series Game of Thrones, a captivating novel about war, courage, survival — and a remarkable friendship that ripples across a lifetime.
During the Nazis’ brutal siege of Leningrad, Lev Beniov is arrested for looting and thrown into the same cell as a handsome deserter named Kolya. Instead of being executed, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives by complying with an outrageous directive: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful Soviet colonel to use in his daughter’s wedding cake. In a city cut off from all supplies and suffering unbelievable deprivation, Lev and Kolya embark on a hunt through the dire lawlessness of Leningrad and behind enemy lines to find the impossible.
By turns insightful and funny, thrilling and terrifying, the New York Times bestseller City of Thieves is a gripping, cinematic World War II adventure and an intimate coming-of-age story with an utterly contemporary feel for how boys become men.
During the Nazis’ brutal siege of Leningrad, Lev Beniov is arrested for looting and thrown into the same cell as a handsome deserter named Kolya. Instead of being executed, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives by complying with an outrageous directive: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful Soviet colonel to use in his daughter’s wedding cake. In a city cut off from all supplies and suffering unbelievable deprivation, Lev and Kolya embark on a hunt through the dire lawlessness of Leningrad and behind enemy lines to find the impossible.
By turns insightful and funny, thrilling and terrifying, the New York Times bestseller City of Thieves is a gripping, cinematic World War II adventure and an intimate coming-of-age story with an utterly contemporary feel for how boys become men.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities3346 Reviews
4.0

Homaira Zaman
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“This is a beautifully written story of a blooming bromance in the midst of the siege of Leningrad. I read it after I saw on Wikipedia that it was one of the two books that inspired The Last of Us videogame (the other being The Road by Cormac McCarthy). It’s relatively fast-paced. I loved the cannibal encounter toward the beginning, and the climactic Chess Game with the Nazi officer had me glued to my seat. The writing also paints a vivid picture of the brutality of Russian winter, too.
Ultimately, my three-star rating comes from my personal lack of attachment to the bromance between the two main characters. As one of the female characters quips, they spend a lot of their time together talking about “asses and cocks”, which gets old after a while for a female reader like me - but then again, what else would they talk about? It’s not like they have anything to eat…
The whole premise of the egg hunt as the central quest of the book felt a bit far-fetched, too. Given that this story is supposed to be a dramatized account from the author’s real-life grandfather, I’m unsure of how seriously to take the egg hunt. Who knows.”

Matt
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Mel M
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Taryn
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About David Benioff
David Benioff was born and raised in New York City. He adapted his first novel, The 25th Hour, into the feature film directed by Spike Lee. With many other screenplays to his credit, he is also the writer of the films, "Brothers" and "X-Men Origins: Wolverine". Stories from his critically acclaimed collection When the Nines Roll Over appeared in Best New American Voices and The Best Nonrequired American Reading. His latest novel is City of Thieves. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter where he is a co-creator and writer for the HBO hit series "Game of Thrones."
Other books by David Benioff
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