BKMT READING GUIDES
A Gentleman in Moscow
by AMOR TOWLES
Paperback : 462 pages
822 clubs reading this now
51 members have read this book
â??How delightful that in an era as crude as ours this finely composed novel stretches out with ...
Introduction
â??The book is like a salve. I think the world feels disordered right now. The countâ??s refinement and genteel nature are exactly what weâ??re longing for.â? â?? Ann Patchett
â??How delightful that in an era as crude as ours this finely composed novel stretches out with old-World elegance.â? â??The Washington Post
He canâ??t leave his hotel. You wonâ??t want to.
From the New York Times bestselling author of Rules of Civilityâ??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 hotelâ??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 countâ??s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.
â??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.â? â??The San Francisco Chronicle
Discussion Questions
1. Start with the Count. How would you describe him? Do you find him an appealing, even memorable character?2. In what way does his gilded cage, his "prison" for decades, transform Count Rostov? How do you see him changing during the course of the novel? What incidents have the most profound effect on him? Consider the incident with the beehive and the honey.
3. The Metropol serves literally and symbolically as a window on the world. What picture does Amor Towles paint of the Soviet Union—the brutality, its Kafka-esque bureaucracy, and the fear it inspires among its citizens? What are the pressures, for instance, faced by those who both live in and visit the Metropol? Does Towles's dark portrait overwhelm the story's narrative?
4. Talk about Nina, who even Towles considers the Eloise of the Metropol. Nina helps the Count unlock the hotel (again, literally and symbolically), revealing a much richer place than the it first seemed. What do we, along with the Count, discover?
5. What might Casablanca be the Count's favorite film? What does it suggest about his situation?
6. Talk about the other characters, aside from Nina, who play an important part in this novel the handyman, the actress, his friend Mishka, and even Osip Glebnikov. Consider the incident with the honey.
7. The Count was imprisoned for writing the poem, "where is it now?", which questioned the purpose of the new Soviet Union. Care to make any comparisons now with Russia under Putin, 70-some years later?
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