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A Gentleman in Moscow
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A Gentleman in Moscow
A Gentleman in Moscow is a 2016 novel by Amor Towles. It is his second novel, published five years after Rules of Civility (2011).
The protagonist is the fictional Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, on 24 October 1889. He was raised on his Rostov family's estate, Idlehour, in Nizhny Novgorod. Rostov's godfather was his father's comrade in the cavalry, Grand Duke Demidov. When the Count's parents die of cholera within hours of each other in 1900, Demidov became the 11-year-old's guardian. Demidov counseled him to be strong for his sister Helena, because "...adversity presents itself in many forms, and if a man does not master his circumstances, then he is bound to be mastered by them." The Rostov siblings grow up into well-adjusted socialites, making numerous visits to nearby estates by horse-drawn troika or sleigh.
As a young man, the Count was sent out of the country by his grandmother for wounding a cad in defense of his sister - events covered through flashbacks. Upon returning home from Paris after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, the Count is arrested and charged with "social parasitism", beginning the main narrative.
Each of the book's chapters is set according to a doubling then halving chronological structure. The first chapter is the day after the Count's arrest, the second is two days after, and subsequent chapters are set five days, ten days, three weeks, six weeks, three months, six months, one year, two years, four years, eight years, and sixteen years after the beginning of the narrative. At this point, the structure reverses, with the time between chapters progressively halving until the final day of the narrative.
Towles's inspiration for the novel was his experience staying at luxury hotels, specifically, a hotel in Geneva, Switzerland, where some guests were permanent residents. He combined the idea of luxury hotels with his knowledge of Russia's long-time historical tradition of house arrest.
The Count is charged as a social parasite before a Bolshevik tribunal, with the expectation that he will be found guilty and shot. He is unrepentant and eloquently refuses to confess. Because of a revolutionary poem attributed to him, for which some senior Bolsheviks consider him one of the heroes of the struggle against the Tsarist regime, the Count is spared a death sentence. Instead, he is placed under house arrest for life at his current residence, the Hotel Metropol in central Moscow.
A military guard escorts the Count back to the Hotel Metropol, where he is ordered to vacate his luxurious suite and move to the cramped servants' quarters on the sixth floor. As time goes on, the Count cultivates a social circle of friends from his youth as well as selected residents, staff, and customers of the Hotel and its restaurants. These include a one-eyed cat, a seamstress, a Russian chef, a French maître d'hotel and former circus juggler, a poet, an actress, an underemployed architect, an orchestra conductor, a prince, a former Red Army colonel, and an aide-de-camp of an American general.
Due to his diminished circumstances and restricted freedom, the Count has time for self-reflection. He is a brilliant conversationalist, readily discussing diverse subjects such as evolution, philosophy, Impressionism, Russian writers and poetry, food, post-revolutionary Russian society, and Russia's contributions to the world.
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A Gentleman in Moscow
A Gentleman in Moscow is a 2016 novel by Amor Towles. It is his second novel, published five years after Rules of Civility (2011).
The protagonist is the fictional Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, on 24 October 1889. He was raised on his Rostov family's estate, Idlehour, in Nizhny Novgorod. Rostov's godfather was his father's comrade in the cavalry, Grand Duke Demidov. When the Count's parents die of cholera within hours of each other in 1900, Demidov became the 11-year-old's guardian. Demidov counseled him to be strong for his sister Helena, because "...adversity presents itself in many forms, and if a man does not master his circumstances, then he is bound to be mastered by them." The Rostov siblings grow up into well-adjusted socialites, making numerous visits to nearby estates by horse-drawn troika or sleigh.
As a young man, the Count was sent out of the country by his grandmother for wounding a cad in defense of his sister - events covered through flashbacks. Upon returning home from Paris after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, the Count is arrested and charged with "social parasitism", beginning the main narrative.
Each of the book's chapters is set according to a doubling then halving chronological structure. The first chapter is the day after the Count's arrest, the second is two days after, and subsequent chapters are set five days, ten days, three weeks, six weeks, three months, six months, one year, two years, four years, eight years, and sixteen years after the beginning of the narrative. At this point, the structure reverses, with the time between chapters progressively halving until the final day of the narrative.
Towles's inspiration for the novel was his experience staying at luxury hotels, specifically, a hotel in Geneva, Switzerland, where some guests were permanent residents. He combined the idea of luxury hotels with his knowledge of Russia's long-time historical tradition of house arrest.
The Count is charged as a social parasite before a Bolshevik tribunal, with the expectation that he will be found guilty and shot. He is unrepentant and eloquently refuses to confess. Because of a revolutionary poem attributed to him, for which some senior Bolsheviks consider him one of the heroes of the struggle against the Tsarist regime, the Count is spared a death sentence. Instead, he is placed under house arrest for life at his current residence, the Hotel Metropol in central Moscow.
A military guard escorts the Count back to the Hotel Metropol, where he is ordered to vacate his luxurious suite and move to the cramped servants' quarters on the sixth floor. As time goes on, the Count cultivates a social circle of friends from his youth as well as selected residents, staff, and customers of the Hotel and its restaurants. These include a one-eyed cat, a seamstress, a Russian chef, a French maître d'hotel and former circus juggler, a poet, an actress, an underemployed architect, an orchestra conductor, a prince, a former Red Army colonel, and an aide-de-camp of an American general.
Due to his diminished circumstances and restricted freedom, the Count has time for self-reflection. He is a brilliant conversationalist, readily discussing diverse subjects such as evolution, philosophy, Impressionism, Russian writers and poetry, food, post-revolutionary Russian society, and Russia's contributions to the world.