Getting Lost in the City of Thieves

From the heart-wrenching yet morbidly beautiful tales of raw human nature and incredibly different ways of life written by Khaled Hosseini to Sue Monk Kidd’s honey-sweet novel of a girl’s maturity into womanhood, the list of recommended books was clearly filled to the brim with amazing literature. This fact produced two very true outcomes; the first is that I found great trouble in having to pick my favorites to finish in time for the end of summer, and I finally did with much deliberation. Which brings us to the second – though I finished my required reading, I’ve decided to continue working on the rest of the list. From those recommended, I newly read two this summer (excluding Pride and Prejudice); the wonderfully crafted Emma by Jane Austen and the perhaps more strictly factual All the President’s Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Though quite possibly polar opposites in both content and style, I absolutely loved both. Always a fan of Jane Austen, I found Emma to be just as wonderful as both Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, for Austen always has a way of producing beautifully light plots and strong female characters through the most beautiful writing. And though admittedly it took me a while to get used to the journalistic style of writing, I was soon dragged into the scandals of the Watergate story seen through the reliable eyes of reporters Woodward and Bernstein in All the President’s Men. Along with the books on the list, I read (and fell in love with) Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson, Sophie’s Choice by William Styron, The House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski, Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest by Ken Kesey, and several more. And though both Kesey’s works was a very close runner up, the novel that most drew me in this summer was one called City of Thieves written by David Benioff.
From the second I picked it up, I fell into it. The book tells the story of the initial narrator’s grandfather, a man rich in dark experience and brimming with the life of his convoluted past. Seen through the eyes of the grandfather as a young boy in German occupied Russia during WWII, the book is none other than a plunge into the depths of physical suffering, psychological pain, and the truest of human emotion unearthed by the tumult within the war. But that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface. The young boy, Lev, soon finds himself captured by his country’s own men after a misunderstanding near his home. While under arrest, he meets his complete opposite; a beautifully confident, striking young man by the name of Kolya, a deserter from the Russian troops who backs down to no one and believes only in himself. Death for both seems imminent, that is, until they are released by the makings of a deal; if the heartily mismatched duo can somehow forage together a dozen eggs for the Russian general’s daughter’s wedding in a week, they are to be set free. With the fact that finding whole chicken eggs in a country devastated by famine, winter, and violence being their least of all problems, Kolya and Lev set out on a journey which leaves both radically altered in the small period of seven days. Between Lev’s incredible leap into maturity, forced upon him by both the atrocities he takes part in and the world of emotion and adventure opened up to him and Kolya’s humorously and meaningfully rich character which plays as the greatest of foils to Lev’s dark and thoughtful side, Benioff’s tale of death and loyalty unwinds and twists itself into one of the most horrendous and absolutely perfect novels I have ever read. Every aspect of the book appeals to the reader. Benioff masterfully blends adventurous plot with musical language, however, perhaps the most magnetic aspect of his written work lays in the invention of the characters. By creating two heroes from everyday men, each adorned with a myriad of faults and set backs, Benioff adds magic to the individual and thus allows the reader to see within the intrinsic heart of human nature; the will to persevere against all odds. (709)