City of Thieves - Softcover

Benioff blends tense adventure, a bittersweet coming-of-age and an oddly touching buddy narrative to craft a smart crowd-pleaser * Publisher's Weekly * Expert tone . . . fine sense of pace * Financial Times * Complex and compelling . . . a thought-provoking novel that leaves its own lingering, haunting presence in the reader's imagination * Waterstones Books Quarterly * Told with compelling power * Sunday Telegraph * David Benioff is an exceptional storyteller. With humour, heart, and at times relentless suspense, he has written a riveting war novel and an engaging coming of age story. CITY OF THIEVES is tender, illuminating, and, be warned, often shocking. -- Khaled Hosseini, author of A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Kite Runner

From the writer of the award-winning Game of Thrones series for HBO based on the books of George R. R. Martin. 'David Benioff is an exceptional storyteller . . . CITY OF THIEVES is tender, illuminating, and, be warned, often shocking.' Khaled Hosseini Four months into the siege of Leningrad, the city is starving. Seventeen-year-old Lev fears for his life when he is arrested for looting the body of a dead German paratrooper, while his charismatic cellmate, Kolya, a handsome young soldier arrested for desertion, seems bizarrely unafraid. Dawn brings, instead of an execution squad, an impossible challenge. Lev and Kolya can find a dozen eggs for an NKVD colonel to use for his daughter's wedding cake, and live. Or fail, and die. In the depths of the coldest winter in history, through a city cut off from all supplies and suffering appalling deprivation, man and boy embark on an absurd hunt. Their search will take them through desolate, lawless Leningrad and the devastated countryside surrounding it, in the captivating journey of two men trying to survive against desperate odds.