City of Thieves by David Benioff

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.

It's been a while since I've enjoyed a fiction(-alized) book as much as this one. A friend lent me this, and I have had it on my shelf for weeks and weeks...but once I started it, I'm having a hard time putting it down, wondering when I'm going to find some time to do some more reading. Turns out the author wrote the book that one of my favorite movies is based upon (25th Hour), so it's not exactly surprising that I like this book, but I'm still struck by how much I'm enjoying it. I think I will remember the first page, the feeling evoked, for the rest of my life–I have been thinking about it every time I have a meal.

This book oddly reminds me of a comic, Jar of Fools (by Jason Lutes), in that it has an amazing combination of hope, despair, brutality and humor.

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So I finished this one in two sittings–although, granted, the second sitting was 2 hours long. I loved this book. The only reservation I had was with a slightly too-pat ending, but it's tough to have complaints when (1) the ending was still satisfying, just less so than the rest of the book and (2) it's a true story, of a sort, so it's likely that “pat” ending was simply the way things went.