A Gentleman in Moscow: The worldwide bestseller

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Charming ... shows that not all books about Russian aristocrats have to be full of doom and nihilism' - The Times, Books of the Year

they seemed to depict an America in which corruption and cruelty lounged on the couch; in which justice was a beggar and kindness a fool; in which loyalties were fashioned from paper, and self-interest was fashioned from steel. In other words, they provided an unflinching portrayal of Capitalism as it actually was.”There is not a single country in the civilized world where less attention is paid to philosophy than the United States” And, The minds of Americans, he says, are universally preoccupied with meeting the body’s every need and attending to life’s little comforts.”

The Duchess of Cornwall shares a reading list | Prince of Wales". www.princeofwales.gov.uk . Retrieved 2022-03-03. By 1950, Sofia is seventeen years old and has started taking piano lessons from Viktor Skadovsky, who conducts the orchestra that plays in hotel’s lobby-floor restaurant, the Piazza. Within three years, she is studying music at the Moscow Conservatory. When she wins a competition, the Count and her hotel friends celebrate with her. As the celebration winds down, however, a visitor, Katerina Litvinova, brings the Count sad news. Katerina is the longtime lover of the Count’s friend from university days, “Mishka” Mindich. Mishka was bookish and hot-tempered, but somehow he and the Count became the best of friends. Over the years, Mishka would drop on in the Count and share the latest developments in the new, proletariat-oriented poetry movement he and others were leading. Mishka was sent to Siberia after he denounced a decision his superior made about a project Mishka had been working on. Mishka was able to visit the Count once after completing his eight-year sentence, but now he is dead. When Katerina mentions the Count’s own poetry, the Count gently corrects her: all the poems published under the Count’s name were really Mishka’s. This is just a snippet from the appearance of Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov before the Emergency Committee of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs on 21 June 1922. Rostov was a member of the wrong class and a "poet", as well. He was destined for a firing squad or an all expense paid trip to Siberia where he could still end up with a bullet in his head. The way the Russians were deciding who was a threat to their new nation and the proper punishment to be enforced per case was so arbitrary and inconsistent that it was impossible to anticipate what your fate was going to be once you came before the Committee. The day after his failed suicide attempt, the Count asks the Metropol’s maître d’ for a job as a waiter. Knowledgeable about food, and skilled in dealing with people, the Count becomes the headwaiter within four years. He, the maître d’, and the hotel chef form a Triumvirate of friends who run the Metropol’s dinner services, including the Boyarsky restaurant and special events in private rooms. The Bishop is a continual thorn in the Triumvirate’s side.

In despair, the Count attempts to kill himself in 1926, on the tenth anniversary of his sister Helena’s death, by throwing himself off of the hotel roof. Fortunately, he is stopped by one of the hotel’s handymen, Abram, who is also an amateur beekeeper and who shares honey with the Count. The taste of the honey has a hint of apples and reminds the Count of his home province, which is known for its orchards. 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. [2] The trial [ edit ] As my review's title indicates, 'A Gentleman In Moscow' is the BEST book I've read in 2018 and despite five months remaining in the year, I doubt that any book will topple its distinction in my mind. This is the first book by author Amor Towles that I'm reading and he is now firmly planted as one of my favorite authors. According to his bio, Towles graduated from Yale University and received an MA in English from Stanford University and boy does this academic prowess show in his writing. Towles' choice of story structure, his intelligent diction and syntax, his masterful crafting of the brilliant plot, and the poetic, sometimes dreamlike storytelling is unlike anything else I've read in a long while. All of the characters introduced are broad and serve an intrinsic purpose.The Count, the titular gentleman in Moscow, is an in-depth character study of a man in exile who does not let the fancy hotel prison get the better of his wits as life goes on around him.