Status
Available
Collection
Publication
Viking (2016), Edition: 1, 480 pages
Description
"A Gentleman in Moscow immerses us in another elegantly drawn era with the story of Count Alexander Rostov. When, in 1922, he is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the count 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. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him a doorway into a much larger world of emotional discovery..."--
Media reviews
Booklist
Booklist
July 1, 2016
In his remarkable first novel, the best-selling Rules of Civility (2011), Towles etched 1930s New York in crystalline relief. Though set a world away in Moscow over the course of three decades, his latest polished literary foray into a bygone era is just as impressive.
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Sentenced as an incorrigible aristocrat in 1922 by the Bolsheviks to a life of house arrest in a grand Moscow hotel, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov is spared the firing squad on the basis of a revolutionary poem he penned as an idealistic youth. Condemned, instead, to live his life confined to the indoor parameters of Metropol Hotel, he eschews bitterness in favor of committing himself to practicalities. As he carves out a new existence for himself in his shabby attic room and within the magnificent walls of the hotel-at-large, his conduct, his resolve, and his commitment to his home and to the hotel guests and staff together form a triumph of the human spirit. As Moscow undergoes vast political changes and countless social upheavals, Rostov remains, implacably and unceasingly, a gentleman. Towles presents an imaginative and unforgettable historical portrait.--Flanagan, Margaret Copyright 2016 Booklist Show Less
Awards
Dublin Literary Award (Longlist — 2018)
Kirkus Prize (Finalist — Fiction — 2016)
Indies Choice Book Award (Honor Book — Adult Fiction — 2017)
Independent Booksellers' Book Prize (Winner — Adult — 2018)
NPR: Books We Love (2016)
Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year (Literary Fiction — 2016)
San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year (Fiction — 2016)
Historical Novel Society Editors' Choice (Literary)
Lariat Adult Fiction Reading List (Selection — 2017)
Chicago Public Library Best of the Best: Adults (Selection — 2016)
Original publication date
2016-09-06