When they are alone, the young man introduces himself as Kolya, who was accused of desertion, but he tells Lev that in fact he was defending his thesis on Ushakovo's The Courtyard Hound, a book and author whom Lev has never heard of. He hears guards coming, the cell door opens, and a young soldier is ushered into the cell. The soldiers take him to the Crosses, the prison in Leningrad.Īfter hours in his pitch dark prison cell, Lev has come to the grim conclusion that he'll never be a great Russian, since he feels half-broken after just his short time in prison. Lev goes back to help her and boosts her over the gate, but the Russian soldiers out on patrol grab Lev before he can climb over himself.
As they race back to the apartment building, Vera falls. Suddenly they hear a car coming and run, because what they’re doing is illegal. When the German lands in the street, Lev takes the man's knife while Grisha opens the man's hip flask and passes it around, toasting the cold that killed this soldier. Vera spots a German soldier falling from the sky in a parachute and the four run down into the street to investigate. Lev, at 17, is a firefighter for the city, and sits on the roof of his apartment building with his friends Vera, Grisha, and Oleg. Everyone's been hungry since the German siege of the city began in September, although many, including Lev's mother and sister Taisya, have evacuated. The narrator changes to Lev (David's grandfather) and it's New Year's Eve in 1942 in Leningrad, Russia, during World War II. The reader also learns that David's grandmother never cooks herself anything more complex than a bowl of cereal. He flies to Florida to speak with his grandfather, and for a week David records his grandfather's stories. David lives in Los Angeles writing screenplays, but when he was asked to write an autobiographical essay, he decided he wanted to write instead about Leningrad, where his grandfather grew up. Eventually, the conglomerate agreed and David's grandparents retired to Florida. In the late 1990s, an insurance conglomerate offered to purchase the company, and David's grandmother asked them to double their offer. As a child, David lived two blocks away from his grandparents, who owned an insurance company. He is an American who describes himself as growing up knowing that his grandfather killed two Germans in a knife fight before he was 18, even though he was never actually told the story.
The novel begins with David as the narrator. The audiobook, narrated by Ron Perlman, was released by Penguin Audio on January 8, 2009.
It was released by Plume on May 15, 2008. It follows the adventures of two youths as they desperately search for a dozen eggs at the behest of a Soviet NKVD officer, a task that takes them far behind enemy lines. It is, in part, a coming of age story set in the World War II siege of Leningrad. City of Thieves is a 2008 historical fiction novel by David Benioff.
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