A Gentleman In Moscow

Amor Towles’ debut novel, Rules of Civility, established him as a master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction, bringing late 1930s Manhattan to life with splendid atmosphere and a flawless command of style. A Gentleman in Moscow immerses us in another elegantly drawn era with the story of Count Alexander Rostov, who is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. His reduced circumstances provide him a doorway into a much larger world of emotional discovery, and the novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavour to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.