A Gentleman in Moscow: A Novel

“The book is like a salve. I think the world feels disordered right now.

Overview

“The book is like a salve. I think the world feels disordered right now. The count’s refinement and genteel nature are exactly what we’re longing for.”—Ann Patchet

“How delightful that in an era as crude as ours this finely composed novel stretches out with old-World elegance.”—The Washington Post

He can’t leave his hotel. You won’t want to.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Rules of Civility—a transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel.

In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and 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 entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.

Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.

Soon to be a major television series starring five-time Academy Award® nominee Kenneth Branagh.

“And the intrigue! . . . [A Gentleman in Moscow] is laced with sparkling threads (they will tie up) and tokens (they will matter): special keys, secret compartments, gold coins, vials of coveted liquid, old-fashioned pistols, duels and scars, hidden assignations (discreet and smoky), stolen passports, a ruby necklace, mysterious letters on elegant hotel stationery . . . a luscious stage set, backdrop for a downright Casablanca-like drama.” —The San Francisco Chronicle

A Gentleman in Moscow Review

“The novel buzzes with the energy of numerous adventures, love affairs, twists of fate and silly antics.”

—The Wall Street Journal

“A winning, stylish novel.”

—NPR.org

“Enjoyable, elegant.”

—Seattle Times

“The perfect book to curl up with while the world goes by outside your window.”

—Refinery29

“Who will save Rostov from the intrusions of state if not the seamstresses, chefs, bartenders and doormen? In the end, Towles’s greatest narrative effect is not the moments of wonder and synchronicity but the generous transformation of these peripheral workers, over the course of decades, into confidants, equals and, finally, friends. With them around, a life sentence in these gilded halls might make Rostov the luckiest man in Russia.”

—The New York Times Book Review

“This is an old fashioned sort of romance, filled with delicious detail. Save this precious book for times you really, really want to escape reality.”

—Louise Erdrich

“Towles gets good mileage from the considerable charm of his protagonist and the peculiar world he inhabits.”

—The New Yorker