But this book's pleasures are in the details. Everything and everyone is forced to change-not least Count Rostov. While the story is, literally speaking, narrowly drawn, in overarching terms the book depicts Russian society making the painful transition from tsarist autocracy to Soviet communism. There is much to delight in-even laugh out loud at-in the Count's circumscribed adventures-but even he can't keep tragedy from encroaching. Under threat of being shot if he as much as steps outside the walls of the Metropol, the debonair and irrepressible Count sets about recreating his life within this gentleman's prison, an effort that takes all of his boundless inventiveness and good humor. Our hero, Count Alexander Illyich Rostov has been sentenced to live out the rest of his life there by the Commissariat for Internal Affairs, which had deemed aristocrats to be enemies of the people. And indeed, A Gentleman in Moscow takes place entirely within its own hotel grande dame, The Metropol. Amor Towles (whose first novel is the sublime Rules of Civility), this time delivers a novel as richly filigreed as the set design of the film The Grand Budapest Hotel. You felt the warm glow of the gas lantern, the luxurious texture of the ball gown, the sting of the cold night air as the horse-drawn carriage carried weary passengers home in the wee hours, after the ball, and the call of history, and war.Ī Gentleman in Moscow carries this lavish sensibility through to post-revolution Russia, as the new Soviet Government assumes power in 1922.

I am a lover of 19th century Russian literature, which so often fused French glamour with the harsh reality of Siberian-style winters and encroaching revolution.

Books like a gentleman in moscow