A really good coming of age story, set in the stark brutality of the Eastern Front. Six months into the Siege of Lenigrad, 17-year old Lev Beniov is regretting the surge of heroism that lead him to stay behind to defend the city. When he's caught by the NKVD looting the body of a Nazi pilot, he's given a task in lieu of execution: Retrieve a dozen eggs for the wedding of an NKVD colonel's daughter, or be executed. Teamed up with Lev is Kolya, an alleged deserter from the Red Army, a student of literature, and a kind of Communist Casanova, a counter-point to the shy and retiring Lev, son of an executed poet and young man of little talents, romantic or otherwise.

Lev and Kolya face off with Leningrad cannibals, and venture across enemy lines in search of a chicken that hasn't yet been eaten. They meet up with prostitutes and partisans, wind up captured by Nazis, and it's up to Lev to save them all in a tense show down with an Einsatzgruppen for their lives (and one dozen eggs). Beautiful written and richly textured with historical details, City of Thieves is a fantastic meditation on growing up, life, and the things that make life worth living, even in the midst of the greatest series of atrocities in human history.