City of Thieves
by David Benioff
Narrated by Ron Perlman
Why Listen to This Audiobook?
Ron Perlman's gravelly baritone turns a story about hunting eggs during a Nazi siege into something that feels ancient and urgent at the same time.
- Great if you want: dark WWII adventure with genuine wit and emotional weight
- Listening experience: fast-paced and cinematic — dread and dark humor in equal measure
- Narration: Perlman's world-weary voice is exactly right for this story
- Skip if: wartime brutality and starvation imagery hit too close
About This Audiobook
Lev Beniov is a teenager in besieged Leningrad when he is arrested for looting a dead German parachutist and thrown into a cell with Kolya, a charming, erratic deserter. Instead of execution, the two are given an absurd assignment: procure a dozen eggs for a Soviet colonel's daughter's wedding cake, in a city that has not seen food of any kind in months. Their search takes them through Leningrad's starving streets and eventually behind German lines, where survival is a daily negotiation with violence, luck, and the limits of human decency.
Ron Perlman's graveled, authoritative voice gives the novel's WWII siege setting an immediate physicality, making the hunger and cold and moral improvisation feel as real as anything in the literature of that conflict. His narration gives equal weight to the friendship between Lev and Kolya, the dark comedy of their mission, and the horror of what the siege has made of the city around them. At just over eight hours, the production handles Benioff's perfect tonal balance without losing a single register.