Instead, I remained in my sunny kitchen in the Valley with a nice plate of hummus. “You have never been so hungry you have never been so cold,” reads the opening line of Chapter 1, and believe me, I was ready to share all the epic wartime fear and wretchedness that Benioff has to offer, was keen to sneak behind enemy lines through frostbitten Soviet woods along with Lev, the book’s teenage narrator. How is it possible, then, that “City of Thieves” left me so thoroughly and discouragingly unmoved? Really, everything a reader could hope for in a buddy story set during the German army’s siege of Leningrad during World War II. It imagines the absurdities and horrors endured by people caught in one of history’s most lethal moments. Viking published his most recent novel, City of Thieves, in May 2008.īenioff is married to actress Amanda Peet the couple has three children.DAVID BENIOFF’S second novel (after “The 25th Hour,” which Spike Lee directed for the screen) features a snappy plot, a buoyant friendship, a quirky courtship, an assortment of menacing bad guys, an atmosphere that flickers between grainy realism and fairy-tale grotesquerie and a grim but irrepressible sense of humor.

Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series of novels. He is also screenwriter and executive producer of Game of Thrones, HBO's adaptation of George R.R. Jim Sheridan produced Benioff’s screenplay Brothers, and Hugh Jackman reprised his role as the clawed mutant in Benioff’s Wolverine. In 2005, Viking Press published Benioff’s collection of short stories, When the Nines Roll Over.īenioff’s screenwriting credits include Troy (2004), directed by Wolfgang Petersen, and Stay (2005), directed by Marc Forster, The Kite Runner (2007). He later wrote the screenplay for Spike Lee’s adaptation of 25th Hour starring Edward Norton and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. He is also screenwriter and executive producer of Game of David Benioff worked as a nightclub bouncer in San Francisco, a radio DJ in Wyoming and an English teacher/wrestling coach in Brooklyn before selling his first novel, The 25th Hour, in 2000. Benioff’s screenwriting credits include Troy (2004), directed by Wolfgang Petersen, and Stay (2005), directed by Marc Forster, The Kite Runner (2007). In 2005, Viking Press published Benioff’s collection of short stories, When the Nines Roll Over. David Benioff worked as a nightclub bouncer in San Francisco, a radio DJ in Wyoming and an English teacher/wrestling coach in Brooklyn before selling his first novel, The 25th Hour, in 2000.

City of thieves benioff