- Benioff, David.
City of Thieves.
New York: Viking, 2008.
ISBN 978-0-670-01870-3.
-
This is a coming of age novel, buddy story, and quest saga set in the
most implausible of circumstances: the 872 day
Siege of Leningrad
and the surrounding territory. I don't know whether the author's
grandfather actually lived these events and recounted them to to him
or whether it's just a literary device, but I'm certain the images you
experience here will stay with you for many years after you put this
book down, and that you'll probably return to it after reading it
the first time.
Kolya is one of the most intriguing characters I've encountered in
modern fiction, with Vika a close second. You wouldn't expect a
narrative set in the German invasion of the Soviet Union to be funny,
but there are quite a number of laughs here, which will acquaint you
with the Russian genius for black humour when everything looks the
bleakest. You will learn to be very wary around well-fed
people in the middle of a siege!
Much of the description of life in Leningrad during the siege
is, of course, grim, although arguably less so than the factual
account in Harrison Salisbury's
The 900 Days (however, note
that the story is set early in the siege; conditions deteriorated
as it progressed). It isn't often you read a historical novel in
which
Olbers' paradox
figures!
February 2010 