![]() Lev and Kolya stumble on a farmhouse where four pretty Russian girls are being kept as sex slaves by a Nazi death squad. Over half the novel happens in enemy territory. That’s where they must go, decides Kolya, and Benioff makes his boundless self-confidence entirely credible. Then Kolya hears of a poultry collective…behind German lines. There’s nothing doing on the black market. ![]() Sparing their lives, for now, NKVD Colonel Grechko gives them a near-impossible assignment in this starving city: five days to find a dozen eggs for his daughter’s wedding cake. His cellmate is 20-year-old Kolya, a boastful Cossack deserter, dazzlingly handsome in contrast to scrawny Lev, who hates his telltale big nose (he’s half-Jewish) their initial hostility turns into the closest of bonds. Lev deserts his firefighter’s post, steals the German’s knife, is arrested by soldiers and jailed. Lev’s real troubles begin when a German paratrooper, frozen to death, lands on his street. (Note that last name: This novel was sparked by tape-recorded memories of author Benioff’s grandfather.) The 17-year-old’s mother and sister were evacuated before the siege began in September his father, a respected poet, was “removed” by the NKVD in 1937. It’s New Year’s Eve, 1941, and Lev Beniov is alone in Leningrad. ![]() Novelist and screenwriter Benioff’s glorious second novel ( The 25th Hour, 2000) is a wild action-packed quest, and much else besides: a coming-of-age story, an odd-couple tale and a juicy footnote to the historic World War II siege of Leningrad. ![]()
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