![]() ![]() It is terrible luck, a wedding with no cake.’ His daughter - beautiful, well-fed, fur-wrapped - is to be married in a week, and her parents wish her to have a proper wedding: ‘This is a tradition, says my wife, we need a cake. The next morning, a Soviet colonel makes the boys an offer they literally cannot refuse: find a dozen eggs. When an unusual event tempts Lev and his childhood friends into looting a corpse - a crime against the State even in wartime - he’s chucked into a jail cell with Kolya, a handsome soldier, just 20 years old and accused of desertion. And for another, he’s hungry - starving, in fact. ![]() For one thing, he’s Jewish and, times being what they were, that was not a good thing to be. This story picks up a year later, as the city’s resident waste away from nightly bombings and dwindling food supply.Īmid this horror, fate seems to have taken a particular dislike to 17-year-old Lev Beniov. Petersburg) and cut it off from the rest of Russia. In real life, on September 8, 1941, the German army surrounded Leningrad (now St. Our intrepid heroes form an unlikely friendship, develop dangerous enemies, argue about life, and get lost in the snow - all while in search of a perfect dozen eggs. This sweet and suspenseful novel is almost a buddy comedy - except the action takes place during the 872-day siege of Leningrad in 1941. ![]()
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