His long love affair with opera singer Anna Urbanova the camaraderie he shares with chef Emile and maitre d’ Andrey and the tender paternal connection first with Nina and later, her daughter Sofia. And ‘thus a good Bolshevik could sleep soundly in the knowledge that the mahogany bed he was lying on was not his and despite the fact that his apartment was furnished with priceless antiques, he had fewer possessions than a pauper!” Characters to loveīut where this book really works its magic is in the relationships between the debonaire Count and the other characters. So too the bit where it’s revealed that Party officials and their friends are living large in confiscated mansions, but have placed plaques on everything inside declaring it the property of “the people”. Take the bit where the Party orders the labels to be ripped from all 100,000 wine bottles in the hotel’s cellar because the wine list was “counter to the ideals of the Revolution” and “a monument to the privilege of nobility”. Other parts of the novel, while not ‘authentic’ as such, are perfectly believable if you know anything about the Soviet system. Though a work of fiction, the Count’s antics (because antics are exactly what they are) are set against actual events in Soviet history, such as the holodomor in Ukraine and the rise of Stalin. For the next 30 years, the Count makes the hotel his home. Set in Soviet-era Russia, A Gentleman in Moscowtells the tale of aristocrat Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, who is ordered to spend the rest of his life under house arrest inside the lavish Hotel Metropol for upsetting certain members of the new Bolshevik regime.Īnd what a life.
But no other word properly captures the pure joy that rushes off the pages of Amor Towles‘ second novel.
It shrieks of stuffy high teas and old ladies with posh accents. Look, I hate to use the word ‘delightful’ in a review. If the measure of a good book is that you feel lost when you finish the last page, and wish that you could start it all over again from scratch, then A Gentleman in Moscow is the very best kind of book. A Gentleman in Moscow is all these things and, hand on my heart, the most delightful book you’ll read this year.
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