City of Thieves

During the German siege of Leningrad, 17-year-old Lev Beniov is caught looting the body of a dead German paratrooper and thrown into a cell with Kolya, a charismatic young soldier arrested for desertion. Instead of being shot, the two are offered their lives by a Soviet colonel if they can find a dozen eggs for his daughter's wedding cake, in a starving city cut off from supplies. Their search takes them through lawless, starving Leningrad. A frame story has an American screenwriter named David recording his grandfather's memories of the war. David Benioff, who co-created Game of Thrones for HBO, published it in 2008 as his second novel.

A reader of The CEO Library named it, through an anonymous form, as one of the three best books they read in 2019.