The book City of Thieves is based in World War 2 Russia, in the city of Leningrad where a siege is taking place. The book is about Lev and Kolya, two young men from arrested for different reasons but given the same task of finding eggs or execution. As the city is struggling for food and German soldiers just await outside the city, this is no easy feat.

Lev and Kolya come across lots of moral dilemmas on the way making choices that no one would like to make. The book is written from the point of view of Lev, A teenager to small for his age which is mildly jealous of Kolya’s good looks and his way of seducing anyone with his speech. This starts with him not liking him at the but growing more fond of him as they spent more time with each other.

I think Lev is a anti-hero because of his motives for doing some of the heroic actions that he did. He always thought that Kolya got all the credit for the things that they did and that he was just the one who was cowardly by backing down from the situations. He did at lot of his actions not usually to help the person so much but to save his own skin or pride. I think this trait is quite common with antiheroes as they are sometimes selfish but still end up doing the right actions as it benefits them as well. The example for this in the book is that they save a group of Russian girls from Nazi control as they needed somewhere to stay as the night was approaching so they infiltrated the house for them to stay in. They couldn’t of cared if they had killed the girls as they had betrayed the Russians by helping the Nazis but they chose to let them go back to the city as it was easier for them. That is what i mean by the heroic actions because of a selfish decision which makes Lev a anti-hero.

Towards the end of the book Lev starts to become more like a typical hero as he starts caring about the people around him, he starts doing actions out of selflessness and compassion which is the traits of a more typical hero. By the very end of the book he forgets the objective of delivering the eggs to the general and cares more about his friends surviving. Even though Lev has traits of both a hero and a anti-hero, for most the book his selfish motives give him quite a narcissistic character but still managing to do the right thing in the end.