The novel begins with a brief prologue, detailing the origins of the story, supposedly coming from the author’s grandparents, specifically his grandfather, who told him the story of their time in the Soviet Union during World War II. His grandfather had killed two Germans before he was 18. His grandmother, infamous for never cooking in the family, is less open about her origins.
It is the midpoint of the brutal Siege of Leningrad, January of 1942. German soldiers surround the Russian city, food is hard to come by, and hope is deteriorating rapidly. Lev Beniov, a young man, is alone in the city, his mother and sister have been evacuated, but he has volunteered to remain, working for the state as a volunteer firefighter, as he is too young to fight on the front lines.
One night, as he and his friends are waiting on the roof of their apartment building the Kirov, a dead German pilot glides in from the sky, held aloft by a parachute. The pilot’s body drops into their street, and the teenagers rush down with morbid curiosity to take a look. As they view the body, they begin to loot various items, a flask of liquor, a pistol, warm gloves, and a scarf. Lev finds a sheath strapped to the pilot’s ankle, and takes it and the knife it contains. As they are looting, a military car rolls by and attempts to arrest the group for breaking curfew. Lev is the only one who is caught. He is thrown into the Crosses, an infamous prison.
After a few hours alone in the dark, another prisoner is introduced into the cell, Nikolai Alexandrovich Vlasov, nicknamed Kolya. Kolya asks whether Lev is a Jew. Lev spitefully responds, asking whether Kolya is a Nazi, a commentary on his blond hair and blue eyes. Kolya jokes that he volunteered to be a spy, but nobody listened to him. He goes on to say that he even speaks some German. The two begin to strike up conversation to pass the time, wondering why they aren’t being executed. In the morning, they are taken from the prison to an influential Colonel in the Soviet Secret Police. On the way, the guards mention that Kolya is a deserter, which Kolya protests.
The Colonel, Grechko, explains that he needs the services of two ‘thieves’. Lev stole ‘state property’ from the body of the German, and Kolya stole from the state by deserting. In order to not be executed, the two are told to find one dozen eggs in Leningrad for the Colonel’s daughter’s wedding in six days. The Colonel confiscates their ration cards, and sends them on their way. The two talk briefly about chess, and Kolya wagers that he could defeat Lev in a match. Lev agrees that they might play later.
Kolya and Lev decide that the first place to look for eggs would be the Haymarket, a black market where farmers smuggle in food in exchange for various things that people in the city have no use for: silverware or fancy clothing. They search the entire Haymarket, but find only a rumor of a man who keeps of coop of chickens on the roof of his apartment. Kolya and Lev decide to investigate the rumor the next day, with light quickly fading. However, they are lured into an apartment building by a man who claims to have eggs. Upon entering, they are assaulted by the man and his wife, who are revealed to be cannibals. Lev flees, but Kolya stays and fights, before escaping.
Having escaped the cannibals, Lev brings Kolya to the Kirov, only to find that it was leveled by a bomb the previous night, while he was imprisoned. They manage to find shelter for the night at the home of one of Kolya’s former relationships, Sonya. She invites them in for some food. After some discussion with the friends who live with her, Lev beds down for the night, as Kolya and Sonya make love in an adjacent room.
The next morning, Kolya and Lev are walking to the apartment where a man is rumored to be keeping chickens. They talk along the way, and Kolya discovers that Lev is a virgin, and takes it upon himself to give his new friend an education in the art of seduction. Upon arrival at the apartment building, they find that it is locked. Two girls who live there arrive, carrying buckets of ice from the Neva River. Kolya offers for him and Lev to carry the buckets in exchange for entry into the building. They go to the roof, and discover that the rumors were true. However, upon entering the coop, they find the corpse of the man, and his still-living grandson. All of the nesting boxes which once held the chickens are empty. Kolya and Lev attempt to convince the boy to go get help and eat, but he has lost all will to live. He gives them the last chicken, before dismissing them. Though he knows the boy will not use it, Kolya gives him the last of his food and money before leaving.
The two return to Sonya’s, where they wait for the chicken to lay an egg, discussing whether the chicken might lay a dozen by Thursday. One of Sonya’s friends returns home, and informs the group that the chicken is, in fact, a rooster, and therefore incapable of laying eggs. They kill the chicken and cook it in a soup. Later that evening, Kolya is discussing poetry with his friends, and Lev lets slip his disdain for the party’s literature in a rant about how authors are disappeared by the state with great frequency. Kolya pieces together from the information he has learned so far that Lev’s father was Abraham Beniov, a poet who was taken by the state and is presumed to have been executed or dies while at a camp in Siberia. Lev plays chess with Sonya’s friend, beating him twice.
The next morning, Lev and Kolya find out that there is a poultry farm not far from the city, and Kolya decides that it is there best chance to find a dozen eggs. Lev follows grudgingly. As they exit the city, the two discuss girls once again briefly. Once they are a good distance out of Leningrad, in the forests nearby, they discover a field filled with the dead bodies of dogs, used as anti-tank explosives by the Soviets. One dog is still alive, and suffering greatly. Kolya asks for Lev’s knife, and slits the dog’s throat.
The two find that they have been travelling the wrong direction, going directly East rather than Southeast. They are in Berezovka, a deserted city behind German lines. They find a body with a Tokarev pistol and a few bullets on a body. Night is falling fast, and the two look for an intact building where they can stay the night. They find a building with electricity and women in it. Kolya instantly deduces what is happening, but Lev is merely confused.
Kolya enters the building, and demands to know why the women are selling themselves to the Germans. The de facto leader of the group blames Kolya and soldiers like him for their present situation, retreating to the city to leave those in the countryside to the mercy of the Germans. They gave the German soldiers sex in exchange for food and survival. They fear one German in particular, a major in the Einsatzgruppen, Nazi squads devoted to murdering communists, gypsies, and jews, named Abendroth. He would sometimes play chess with the girls. Kolya asks why they don’t flee to the city, and one of the girls recounts the brutal story of the murder of a girl who tried to run, named Zoya. Abendroth found Zoya after she tried to escape, and sawed off her feet in front of the other girls in the house.
Kolya, spurred to rage by this story, determines that he and Lev will wait in the house and kill the Germans when they come later that night. He and Lev bide their time in a back room until the girls give them a signal to let them know how many soldiers they should expect; six in total arrived that night.
As Kolya and Lev prepare to fight, shots ring out outside. A group of partisans, Soviet civilians who used guerilla tactics to resist the German occupation, had been watching the house, and gunned down the Germans when they arrived. The leader of the partisans, who gives his name as Korsakov, demands to know what Kolya and Lev are doing in the house. Kolya explains his mission in very vague terms. Meanwhile, Lev attempts to strike up a conversation with a female sniper, named Vika, who he finds himself strongly attracted to.
As the group prepares to depart the house, the girls who had been staying there depart, attempting to make it to Leningrad. Kolya and Lev decide to join in with the partisans for now, and march with them.
The following morning, the partisans are found by a German patrol and are attacked. All of them but Vika, Kolya, Lev, and one other, named Markov, are killed. The four survivors hide from the patrol at first, but cause a diversion and slip in with the group of Soviet prisoners the patrol has with them when the opportunity arises.
As they march, a prisoner recognizes Markov, and betrays his identity as a partisan to the German soldiers. Markov is executed. The rest of the prisoners consider the man who accused Markov as a pariah thereafter, and he is isolated from the group.
The Germans march the Soviet prisoners into a schoolhouse, and begin to administer a test to determine whether their prisoners are literate or not. Vika whispers to Kolya and Lev that they should feign illiteracy, which they do. The literates are separated from those who cannot read, and are promptly executed by the Germans. The illiterates are forced into a small shed to spend the night, to be used as manual labor at steel mills in Estonia.
That night, Vika and Lev bond, discussing their origins, and sharing a bit of food. Lev finds out that she was an astronomy student at her university, and asks her a question he has always wanted to know the answer to- why the sky is dark at night if each of the stars is as bright as the sun, or brighter, and light travels forever. Vika tells him that the universe’s expansion is the cause, and Lev feigns understanding to try and impress her.
When they are awakened the next morning, the group discovers the body of Markov’s accuser, his throat slit. Lev suspects that Vika somehow managed it. As they march further on the road, a vehicle in the German’s escorting convoy throws a track, causing the whole column to come to a halt. Kolya seizes the opportunity, and begins to use his German skills to talk with a few of the soldiers. His gregarious nature allows him to strike up a rapport with the soldiers. One of them walks over to the staff car which contains Abendroth, and then returns to Kolya, who walks off and looks pleased. He explains to Lev and Vika that he has arranged for the three of them to be brought to Abendroth’s field office later that night, where Lev will play Abendroth in a game of chess. If Lev wins, he will set the three of them free and give them a dozen eggs. They agree that they will try to kill Abendroth that night.
That night, Abendroth holds to the deal, and brings the trio before him. He has a few soldiers with him. He negotiates down with the three, determining that if Lev wins, he can have his dozen eggs, and Abendroth will set Vika free, but he cannot allow his conscience to free Kolya and Lev, a soldier and a Jew. Lev agrees, and begins to play the match. Abendroth has a soldier bring in the eggs. As he is on the verge of victory in the chess match, Lev draws his knife, and a struggle begins between the Russians and the Germans. Lev stabs Abendroth in the stomach, killing him, before stabbing another German soldier in the back many times. The three escape, running from the encampment towards Leningrad. After a while, they determine that they are far enough away to stop running.
Vika reveals to Lev that she is a member of the NKVD, and has to return to the countryside to continue to help other partisan groups, but that she will find him after the war. They kiss.
Kolya and Lev make their way back to the outskirts of Leningrad. As they walk towards Soivet lines, soldiers begin to shoot at them. The two dive for cover, screaming that they are Russians, and that the soldiers should stop shooting. As they stop, Kolya discovers that he has been shot in his butt. The soldiers drive out to the two, where Kolya shows them the letter from the Colonel. They load Kolya into their car, and drive him to a hospital. However, due to several delays along the way, Kolya dies from blood loss before he reaches the hospital.
Lev takes the box of eggs and brings them to the Colonel, who is overseeing the unloading of crates that were airlifted in the previous day. He is surprised that Lev managed to find the eggs. As Lev hands over the eggs, a nearby solider informs the Colonel that they now have four boxes of eggs, in addition to the three which arrived by airlift. The Colonel issues Lev two new officer-grade ration cards.
Lev returns to Sonya’s apartment. He receives an assignment from the government to work as a typist for Red Star, the military newspaper. One day, as he is reading a novel in his new apartment, a knock comes on the door. Vika is there, dressed well and groomed. She carries a carton of eggs. Lev suggests they make an omelet, but Vika merely replies that she doesn’t cook.
