1st book of 2010

I've been reading City of Thieves for weeks now. I got stuck and couldn't make headway. Until the other night. All of a sudden it caught fire like a slow burning match does and I sailed through to the end. It was a lovely book. Beautiful and sad and ridiculous. Everything a war has the potential to be. I know beautiful isn't something that immediately pops into mind when thinking about a war. That wars used to be about saving something good (at least in part) - a fighting for something necessary; freedom, peace, morality, is of course deftly symbolized by the loss of those willing to die to save something more important than just one life.
Anyhoo... this book was narrated (sort of) by a grandfather to a grandson, a thing I immediately forgot right away, therefore losing a bit of the personal investment that should have been a part of my character assessment. A 17 year old boy gets picked up for looting and is thrown in jail during the seige of Leningrad. He and his cellmate, a young charming man picked up for desertion are called into the General's office the next morning and given an unusual task. They will be set free if they can bring back one dozen eggs for the general's daughter's wedding cake within a week. Eggs being, of course, extraordinarily hard to come by. So they set out, under the most dangerous circumstances. The people they meet along the way, the things they see, the danger they face, the friendship they find, changes them. The story is timeless and the writing is seamless. I loved it.