The City of Thieves

Introduction

This novel is written by David Benioff, who was born in 1970 in New York. He earned a BA at Dartmouth College in 1992, and an MA at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. Before achieving success as a screenwriter, author, and producer, Benioff earned his living variously as a bouncer, disc jockey, educator, and wrestling coach. The main character of this novel includes:

Major Abendroth, the Nazi commandant of a prison camp, becomes a target for Lev and Kolya because it is rumored he has eggs. Lev beats him at chess in exchange for the eggs.

Oleg “Grisha” Antokolsky is one of Lev's friends who escapes arrest the night they loot the body of the dead German paratrooper.

Lev Beniov, the seventeen-year-old protagonist, is offered freedom from prison if he can find a dozen eggs needed to make a wedding cake for a Soviet colonel's daughter.

Galina is one of the young women forced to serve the sexual needs of the Nazis in exchange for food and lodging outside Leningrad.

Sonya Ivanovna has an intimate relationship with Kolya and gives refuge to him and Lev.

Korsakov is the leader of the Soviet partisans whose group Lev and Kolya infiltrate.

Vika, the crack-sniper who works for Korsakov, is also a member of the NKVD. Lev falls in love with her.

Nikolai Alexandrovich Vlasov, called Kolya, is the deserter Lev meets in the Crosses prison.

Zoya, a fourteen-year-old forced to join Galina and Nina as a prostitute for the Einsatzgruppen, the Nazi death squads.

Discussion

“Lev (the main character) is able to transform himself from an innocent child to a mature adult by overcoming many challenges in his journey to find eggs, which lead to his manhood”

The above line clearly illustrates the important, significance and emotional appeal that is associated with the character of “Lev”. In City of Thieves (2009), David Benioff creates a fictional protagonist, Lev Beniov, an average seventeen-year-old, and his likable soldier-sidekick, Kolya, within the setting of the brutal and horrific Siege of Leningrad. The action opens with Lev, a member of the Kirov Fifth-Floor Brigade, sitting on the rooftop of his building on New Year's Eve. He is orphaned by the disappearance of his Jewish poet-father at the hands of the NKVD (Russian Secret Police) and his mother and sister, who have fled the city, as the nine-hundred-day Nazi siege begins. The daily fight for survival as bombs fall and food grows scarce makes Lev and his friends ...