Short, Tragic, Hilarious

Though just as tragic as any good Russian novel, "City of Thieves" was written by American author David Benioff. This one is a little over 200 pages and easy to read. The author was inspired by stories from his own grandfather, and used those stories as a jumping-off point for his best-selling novel. It's set in a small town in Russia that's under siege by the Nazis in WWII. The narrator is sent, along with a deserter of the Russian army, on an impossible mission by a prominent Soviet colonel. The boys' alternative to this mission is execution or slow starvation, so they cross enemy lines and encounter cannibals with human torsos hanging behind a bloody sheet, sex slaves held captive by Nazis, dogs rigged with bombs, a rogue group of Russian soldiers that are hell-bent on executing a certain important member of the SS, and finally actual Nazis that they have to out-wit in order to conceal the fatal fact that the narrator is a Jew. The bleak snowy landscape and depressing reality of what the Russian people endured is contrasted by the author's sharp wit and clever use of humor. The ending of this book is what really makes it so memorable.