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Professional liar

David Benioff feeds need to tell stories
By J. Rentilly

This is certainly the case for City of Thieves’ Lev
and Kolya, the World War II odd couple whose only
chance of surviving Nazi-occupied Europe is to
secure a dozen eggs for a powerful Soviet colonel to
use in his daughter’s wedding cake. The stakes are
never less than life and death, but the journey is one
toward love.

WHEN DAVID BENIOFF was 7, he answered a
“what does your daddy do” school assignment by
penning a flowery tome about his father’s adventur-
ous—if entirely fabricated—career as a submarine
commander. “There aren’t many submarine com-
manders living in Manhattan,” he admits. “My
teacher was a little suspicious.”
Benioff says that road trip is one oft taken by
writers, including himself on the seven-year path
of composing Thieves. “Writers want to be loved
by strangers,” he admits. “That’s all
It was during his teen years that
d.

Benioff embraced a line by Isaac Bashevis Singer: “When I was a child, they called me a liar, but now that I am grown up, they call me a writer.” Indeed, grade school fibs have led Benioff from a childhood immersed in comic books and Dungeons & Dragons to short-lived stints as a club bouncer and a high school English teacher and, finally, a white-hot career as a best-selling novelist (City of

I want, really: to invite a devoted reader into my dream.”

DEBORAH FEINGOLD

David Benioff

Thieves, this month’s Book Buyer’s Pick), in-demand screenwriter ( Troy, Wolverine, The Kite Runner) and co-creator of HBO’s smash series Game of Thrones.

Particularly captivated by Stan Lee’s X-Men comic books and E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, Benioff has been lying his entire life, but in a good way, a writerly way. Whether in school, on camping trips or at marathon D&D games, Benioff was telling stories, often tales of survivors and survival, outsiders who yearn, sometimes outlandishly, for a place to belong.

This is a proposition few readers can resist, as Thieves virtually sings with humor, pathos, savagery, utterly indelible characters and paragraphs that tease, turn and crescendo like a great symphony. Benioff creates an immediate emotional urgency with the book’s prologue, which claims the book retells his grandfather’s harrowing experiences in World War II, an enchanted narrative merely told to Benioff one summer’s day. In fact, Benioff’s grandfather lived his entire life in New York. The setup is a lie, too, another homage to Singer’s song of subterfuge.

“It’s a novel. It says so right there on the cover,” Benioff says in his defense. “The narrator of the book positions it as a true story, but he’s a fictional character too, so I wouldn’t trust anything he says.” Benioff burst almost simultaneously into the worlds of publishing and filmmaking in 2002, when his first novel, The 25th Hour, was both published to stellar reviews and adapted into a big studio motion picture written by the author and directed by Spike Lee. Since then, he has forged an enviable career, while being “deliberately lazy.” Translation: He is taking his time—as a major prose author. Today, he splits his time between Los Angeles, Manhattan and Belfast, and is married to the actress Amanda Peet, with whom he has two children.

Earlier this year, HBO premiered Game of Thrones, a brutal, sensual, epic fantasy series (which he describes as “Sopranos meets Middle Earth”) based on the novels by George R.R. Martin, adapted by Benioff and longtime friend and collaborator D.B. Weiss. “People thought we were nuts going to HBO with a show about ice demons and dragon eggs, but it’s worked out pretty well,” says Benioff.

“I know my mom was worried about me a lot when I was a kid, being so into fantasy games and making up stories all the time and comic book heroines like Jean Grey,” he says. “I’m pretty sure she didn’t expect those obsessions to come in handy later in life, but they have.” And that’s no lie. C

COSTCO HAS 50 SIGNED COPIES of David Benioff’s City of Thieves to give away. For a chance to win, send an email with your name and mailing address to give away@costco.com, with “David Benioff” in the subject line. Or print your name, address and daytime phone number on a postcard or letter and send it to: David Benioff, The Costco Connection, P.O. Box 34088, Seattle, WA 98124-1088.

NO PURCHASE OR PAYMENT OF ANY KIND IS NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN THIS SWEEPSTAKES.

Purchase will not improve odds of winning. Sweepstakes is sponsored by Penguin Group, 375 Hudson St., New York, N Y 10014. Open to legal residents of the U. S. (except Puerto Rico) who are age 18 or older at the time of entry. One entry per household. Entries must be received by November 1, 2011. Winners will be randomly selected and noti;ed by mail on or before December 1, 2011. The value of the prize is $15. Void where prohibited. Winners are responsible for all applicable federal, state and local taxes. Odds of winning depend on the number of eligible entries received. Employees of Costco or Penguin Group and their families are not eligible. Signed book giveaway

WHAT’S NOT TO love about David Benioff? He’s handsome, has a beautiful wife and, oh yeah, has shown more talent in the past few years than most of us could ever hope to exhibit in a lifetime.

FRANCE FREEMAN

In his second novel, City of Thieves, Benioff tells a coming-of-age story of two World War II prisoners whose only hope for survival lies in stealing a dozen eggs for a powerful colonel to use for his daughter’s wedding cake. As the two slink around a lawless Leningrad, a great friendship is born.

Despite the humor that flows through this book, Benioff doesn’t shy away from the fact that brutal realities of war are unavoidable for the two protagonists, Lev and Kolya. But he also shows readers the beauty of a friendship formed in the midst of life’s ugliest moments.