City of Thieves

I read this book for a book club and in a lot of ways it is a typical book you read for a book club. It’s well-acclaimed, not too long and requires minimal context. It’s the type of book that you should have a good time picking up and finishing within a month. That is not an insult to this book whatsoever because I tend to love book club books and this one is no exception.

City of Thieves tells the story of a boy named Lev during the course of one week of his life in WWII Russia. Lev goes through a lot of trauma during the course of this week and we feel every second of it. But where this book truly shines is in the moments where it doesn’t focus on the horrific things that Lev goes through. In these moments we see the humanity of Lev and the other people around him as they do their best to survive and thrive in an extremely difficult time. Historical fiction is a genre that I’ve always really enjoyed for this reason. Too often while reading a history book or listening to a podcast we hear about the sheer numbers or only the important figures. This is especially true of WWII. But a book like this lets us look at a small story within that time period and realize that sometimes teenagers in WWII just acted like teenagers. I can definitely see an argument that this book is too juvenile but I think it’s quite realistic and I never had a problem with the tone. Benioff does not shy away from the atrocities that he is writing about, he just chooses to dedicate some words to things outside of them and I think that allows this story to work. And it works so well. In fact, this is a book that I don’t have any real criticisms for. It’s pretty perfect.