City of Thieves is one of those books recommended to me time and again, and I always think, "Oh yes, I must read this," and then I never get around to it. But after stumbling across the audio version and seeing that it was narrated by Ron Perlman, I knew I couldn't delay any longer. I'm so glad I didn't. City starts with Lev, our hero, discovering a dead German paratrooper frozen on the streets of Leningrad. The year is 1941 and the Russians are under siege from the Nazis, starving and freezing to death in bitterly large numbers. Lev decides to pocket the paratrooper's knife and then is promptly arrested for looting and thrown into jail with a charismatic deserter named Kolya. Together, they have the chance to escape execution if they can accomplish one very simple--but impossible--task: find one dozen eggs in a city where food is so scarce that people are eating dirt.
David Benioff (an executive producer and screenwriter of the HBO series Game of Thrones) manages to weave together vivid historical settings and unforgettable characters, balancing tragedy with raunch, and the senselessness of war with genuine affection between the characters. The author's screenwriting roots are apparent in the bantering dialogue, the quick pacing, and the cinematic descriptions of a broken country slowly freezing to death. Ron Perlman does an excellent job capturing the accents and intonations of the characters, and this was one of the few audiobooks I found myself taking out of the car to listen to, too wrapped up in the story to stop. City of Thieves is the kind of book that will appeal to historical fiction fans, teenage boys and book club groupies--in short, to anyone who likes a compelling, human story.