City of Thieves
By: David Benioff / Narrated By: Ron Perlman
Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
Brutal yet endlessly beautiful
You can’t help but find City of Thieves absolutely engrossing. It is hampered only by Ron Perlman’s narration, which at times reminded me of Robertson Dean (NOT my favorite narrator!). If you can get past that, you’re golden, so just listen to a sample of it well before you buy.
It starts off with Lev, barely coming into his manhood, thrown in prison for looting the corpse of an ejected Luftwaffe pilot. The crime: punishable by death. There he meets Kolya, a sex-starved young man, arrested for desertion. The crime: definitely punishable by death. Fate in the guise of an NKVD colonel steps in as he sets them on a journey to find a dozen eggs for his daughter’s wedding. If they can do that, they’ll be spared.
But we’re talking the Siege of Leningrad, and starvation is all that anyone knows. How and where will they find an egg, let alone a dozen?
It’s a truly mesmerizing search, and we come to know both young men so well. While Lev is the main character (introduced as the author’s grandfather), Kolya is unforgettable. He’s funny, obscene even, and we grow close to him just as the two of them grow close to each other.
Expect brutality. Starvation can make people cannibals; it can make people killers. And the Nazis? Need I say anything about that? What they do to a group of girls, isolated in a farmhouse that our two heroes take shelter in, will haunt you. And in City of Thieves, rape is probably one of the gentler acts that occurs. Externally, horrors abound, but within the hearts of Lev and Kolya, there is something warm and peaceful going on. It makes for a truly dynamic story.
I bought this based on other reviews and ‘cause it was on sale. But trust me. After listening to it, I vouch for it. I would’ve happily paid full-price if I knew how funny, how disturbing, how ultimately love-filled it is.
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