Bookn' with Friends: "City of Thieves" by David Benioff

WPL's Bookn' with Friends adult book club will meet on Monday, March 30 to discuss City of Thieves by David Benioff. Selected to meet the 2026 Reading Challenge topic "a World War 2 story," the 2008 historical fiction novel is set in Russia during a brutal Nazi siege. At once an adventure, a coming-of-age story, and a buddy narrative, City of Thieves has a 4.3 star rating on Goodreads and was a 2009 Alex Award winner.  

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During the Nazis’ brutal siege of Leningrad, Lev Beniov is arrested for looting and thrown into the same cell as a handsome deserter named Kolya. Instead of being executed, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives by complying with an outrageous directive: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful Soviet colonel to use in his daughter’s wedding cake. In a city cut off from all supplies and suffering unbelievable deprivation, Lev and Kolya embark on a hunt through the dire lawlessness of Leningrad and behind enemy lines to find the impossible.

By turns insightful and funny, thrilling and terrifying, City of Thieves is a gripping, cinematic World War II adventure and an intimate coming-of-age story with an utterly contemporary feel for how boys become men.