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City of thieves
437 pages
A brutally cold, darkly hilarious, and ultimately heartbreaking sprint through a war-torn wasteland in search of the impossible.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like trudging through knee-deep snow while your best friend tells you a wildly inappropriate joke to keep you from freezing to death. It is a masterclass in tonal balance, seamlessly weaving the visceral, starving horrors of a besieged city with the sharp, crackling banter of a buddy comedy. The narrative moves at a propulsive, cinematic clip, driven by a ticking-clock premise that feels both absurd and terrifyingly real. The prose is brutally efficient, stripping away sentimentality to reveal the raw, beating heart of an unlikely friendship forged in the bleakest of circumstances. It will delight readers who crave historical fiction with a modern, gritty edge—those who want to be simultaneously horrified, amused, and ultimately left with a profound sense of bittersweet heartbreak.
- Mood
- freezing
- tense
- bleak
- camaraderie-filled
- Tone
- wry
- darkly comedic
- unsentimental
- gritty
- Pace
- propulsive
- Themes
- absurdity of survival · unlikely friendships · loss of innocence · wartime trauma · endurance
- The writing
- Cinematic, sharp, and brutally efficient, balancing visceral horror with pitch-perfect banter.
- The arc
- Moves from terrified desperation and cynical detachment to profound, heartbreaking loyalty and bittersweet survival.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love historical fiction that doesn't feel dusty, blending intense survival stakes with dark buddy-comedy dynamics.
Content notes
- starvation
- graphic violence
- cannibalism
- war trauma
- sexual violence
- antisemitism
About the book
From the critically acclaimed author of The 25th Hour, 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, 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.
Description from Open Library.
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