A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

by James Wallace Harris, 8/2/24

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles is about an aristocrat, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, sentenced to house arrest in the Hotel Metropol after the communist revolution. Instead of being confined to his luxury suite, Rostov is moved to a tiny ten by ten foot room in the attic of the hotel, where he is destined to live from his early twenties to his mid-sixties.

Normally, I think of novels about Russia as grim reading, either set before or after the revolution. A Gentleman in Moscow is enchanting. Both Rostov manner and Towles’ prose is charming and captivating. The novel does touch on the harshness of communistic Russia, but the story carefully isolates the reader from that darkness. In a way, it’s a kind of fairytale for grownups, like the Humphrey Bogart film Casablanca.

While A Gentleman in Moscow constantly alludes to Russian literary works, which it admires, its story is light and airy. A Gentleman in Moscow is a love story on many levels without ever being a romance. Rostov does find a woman to love, but it’s about his love for his adopted daughter, family, friends, food, drink, memories, place, and traditions.

I have met many people who raved about this book and pushed me to read it. I have not met anyone who disliked it. Only a misanthrope would hate this story. The novel was made into an eight-part limited series that’s currently running on Paramount+ which follows the original novel very well. I’m sorry I didn’t get to this novel sooner.

A Gentleman in Moscow came in #3 on The Reader Top 100 poll of the best books of the 21st century so far.

JWH