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Aug 03, 2015wyenotgo rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
This book has a lot going for it: High adventure, dark (but at times hilarious) comedy, intriguing characters and a compelling historical drama. It certainly has its share of gritty scenes, the setting being the siege of Stalingrad, surely one of the most vicious, cruel episodes in the history of warfare. Vast numbers of people are literally dying of starvation every day and the living must resort to the most extreme measures just to survive, even including the sale of human flesh. Human ingenuity contrives astonishing things when faced with dire necessity; for example dismantling books in order to boil the binding to extract the glue, thus concocting a sort of thin "book soup". The plot reaches its climax in a chess game played for truly life or death stakes. Not for the faint of heart, but a wonderfully entertaining read.