A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

In September of 1986, I landed in London, England, to start a job at the publishing house Faber & Faber. I thought I had a room rental arranged, but when I showed up on the doorstep of the flat, the tenant knew nothing about a girl from California coming to live with him. With my plan in ruins, I scrambled to find temporary housing at a hotel, and that is how I landed at the Holiday Inn Knightsbridge. It was in that hotel where I spent the next two near-perfect weeks of my life. I worked in Russell Square in Bloomsbury during the day at Faber, and then at night took a tube and then a bus to my hotel. Once safe in my room, like a grown-up Eloise, I feasted on room service meals, perfectly chilled half carafes of white wine, and glorious hours of BBC programming. “A Gentleman in Moscow” by Amor Towles is the fictional story of Count Alexander Rostov, who was sentenced by a Bolshevik tribunal in 1922 to house arrest in the Metropol, an elegant hotel across from the Kremlin. His offense was writing a poem that the Boshevik’s found subversive. Instead of becoming Rostov’s prison, the Metropol becomes his safe haven and sanctuary. Within the walls of the hotel, Rostov transforms from an aristocrat who has never worked a day in his life into a real person – one with a room in the attic of the building and a job as a waiter in the hotel’s restaurant. His confinement morphs into an awakening for the Count who spends four decades inside this hotel, surrounded by food, wine, literature and stories. While Russian history takes place outside of the hotel, the Count makes the best of his situation, living out his life, making friends and even raising a child. His rituals become his salvation, and his charm infatuates every guest and employee in this wonderful book. To purchase this book on Amazon click here.