Books: City of Thieves

I found out about City of Thieves from Kevin Slowey's blog. Based on my experience with the last book I read on his recommendation, I was a little nervous, but I really enjoyed this book. Actually, I guess "enjoyed" might not be the best description--City of Thieves is set in Russia during World War II. In particular, a large part of the story takes place in Leningrad (or Stalingrad or St. Petersburg, at different times in history) while it was under siege by the Nazis. I never went much farther with history than what I learned in school, so before this I wasn't really fully aware of what that meant--starvation, terror, abandonment and death, in a nutshell. So I can't say I enjoyed reading it, but I am glad that I read it, and I would highly recommend it.

City of Thieves follows two young men who have been caught and thrown in prison for minor crimes. They are taken out of prison and given a task by a powerful colonel--bring him a dozen eggs within a week to make his daughter's wedding cake, and they will be absolved of their crimes rather than being shot. In a city where people have been eating bread made of sawdust and not much more for half a year, this is quite a task. To make things a little more interesting, the men are polar opposites--the narrator is younger, more reserved and inexperienced, while his companion is an outgoing, arrogantly likeable playboy.

City of Thieves is well written, fascinating and hard to put down. The story draws you in continually, and along the way you learn quite a lot about WWII Russia. It is not a pretty story by any means--it's filled with death, sex, war crimes and starvation. It is narrated almost completely by a seventeen-year-old boy, and his thoughts and opinions are as politically incorrect as any teenage boy. But it's hard to put down--I finished the book in two days--and now, three days later, it's still on my mind. Read it. Don't expect to laugh the whole way through, but expect to learn a lot and be entertained, if sometimes a little horrified.