Like most folks, I tend to think myself moderately savvy about the world, so it surprises me whenever I'm confronted with a slice of history with which I'm unfamiliar. (Which happens all the time.) Take for instance, the
Siege of Leningrad during
World War Two. Because the siege concerned two countries, neither of which was the United States, I -- and I assume, most Americans -- have little understanding of that engagement. Even though it was one of the war's most decisive confrontations, because it was fought on the other side of the world by groups which had little relevance to me a decade and a half later in my late 1950s childhood, it had no perceived impact on my tiny outpost in the backwoods of Arkansas.
The first inkling I had of its importance came with the U.S. film,
Enemy at the Gates in 2001. The movie seemed to me mildly interesting, but nothing about it raised it above the thousands of other films just like it: a war movie with a love interest. Yeah, yeah, been there, done that. The impact of the setting was diminished by the banality of the subplot of boy-vs.-boy-for-girl.
My epiphany came with the book
City of Thieves by
David Benioff, one of the fellows responsible for bringing
Game of Thrones to
television. "Thieves" -- set in the Russian city of
Leningrad (aka St. Petersburg) during the
Nazi siege -- gives a stark depiction of what war means to people, be they generals dining on roasted chicken or urchins starving in the streets.
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| David Benioff |
Here again is that universal guy-v.-guy-over-gal subplot demanded by contemporary market-driven bottom-liners, but at least the main plot of survival-during-wartime comes through with all its unflinching brutality. Strangely enough, this brutality is what gives the best reflection of its benevolent twin, nobility.
Even the surprise revelation of the
ending doesn't detract too much from the overall hopeful tone of the book as a whole. After all, destruction-of-all-that's-civilized (a staple of Benioff's
GoT series) is simply the evil twin of all's-well-that-ends-well.
