Sometimes imagination is better than truth. David Benioff, author of The 25th Hour, learned this in writing his novel City of Thieves. Benioff visited his retired grandparents to hear the story of how they survived the infamous siege of Leningrad during World War II. His grandmother, unwilling to revisit the painful memories, would not speak to Benioff about the siege. His grandfather reportedly had just one useful thing to say. “You’re a writer,” he told him. “Make it up.” So he did. City of Thieves is a coming-of-age story about two young men and the transformative power of war.
Though he is first a novelist, Benioff is perhaps best known for his work as a screenwriter—he adapted The 25th Hour, as well as Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, for the screen. Benioff appears in South Hadley this week to read from and sign copies of City of Thieves.
May 27, 7 p.m., free, Odyssey Bookshop, Village Commons, 9 College St., South Hadley, (413) 534-7307.
Memory Besieged
