Legit Lit: City of Thieves

How I love a good black comedy! There's something immensely satisfying about laughing at bleak situations - perhaps it makes them easier to cope with. David Benioff's superb City of Thieves certainly has the "black" covered. It takes place in the dead of winter in Russia during World War II. Its hero is Lev, a young man living along in Leningrad after his father has been arrested and his mother and sister have fled. Like everyone else in the city, he's starving. And then he's arrested and told that he and fellow prisoner Kolya will have the opportunity to perform an impossible feat in exchange for their freedom. If they fail, they will be executed. Yup. Black. But here is where things start to get too ludicrous not to make you giggle: the pair is charged with finding a dozen eggs, desperately needed to bake a cake for the colonel's daughter's upcoming wedding.

Who says you can't judge a book by its cover? The image that adorns the outside of this novel captures the tone of the tale perfectly. Most of the space is occupied by an expanse of white snow and a black sky. The only other color that jumps out immediately is the blood red used for the author's name and some underscoring. Two tiny figures, looking isolated and cold, trudge past a skeletal tree. It looks bleak and hopeless. But then, if you look very carefully, you notice that the pair are walking toward a tiny chicken, perched nearly out of sight on the horizon. In this picture, it's nothing more than a white speck, but trust me, it's there. The tone of the image changes instantly the moment you see it. The absurdity of a pair of nearly grown men pursuing a chicken in the middle of a winter's night makes the whole image turn from desolate to humorous. And the dark situations Lev encounters during his desperate, madcap adventures with the inimitable Kolya - if I could have a beer with any literary character, Kolya would be among the finalists - which include starvation, illness, cannibalism, injustice, and forced prostitution, are absurd as well. Benioff masterfully relates grim situations with an impossible cocktail of grave respect and buoyant levity that makes horrifying Stalin-era Russia a backdrop for a thrilling, entertaining, page-turner. The writing is buttery-smooth and vivid. You won't like the ending of this book, mostly because it has one.

Another really interesting aspect of this book is the guessing game you'll find yourself playing at the beginning and at the end of it. Benioff begins the book with a short chapter about going to interview his Russian grandparents about their experiences during the siege of Leningrad.  His grandmother refuses to talk abotu it, but his grandfather, whose name is Lev Beniov, reluctantly agrees to answer some questions. And then the story begins, with the introduction of the main character, Lev Beniov. OK, (you'll think to yourself), this is the grandfather's story. But "Beniov" is pretty darn close to "Benioff."  Is this narrator - who disappears after the first chapter and reappears only at the tail end of the book -just a fictional creation, or could Benioff be sharing his real family history, here? But the events in the book seem too unbelievable to have actually occurred. Did he invent it, or is he simply sharing his grandfather's story? (I know the answer, but I won't tell you.)

Not that this should convince you to read his book more than anything I've already written, but you should know that David Benioff is pretty handsome, too.