Deja Vu

I bought City of Thieves a few weeks back after hearing a review on NPR and my wife commenting of interest upon another critic's take in the NYTBR. The demand of the house has kept my wife way from such, other than a reading fo the first chapter and so, yesterday, I read the entire novel. I found myself scratching my head at a host of instances during the reading which sounded distinctly familiar. The afterward affords Benioff the space to thank Harrison Salisbury and Curzio Malaparte for their seminal books The 900 Days and Kaputt: two works which have deeply affected me in recent years.