Literature

A Gentleman In Moscow by Amor Towles

Tuesday, May 23
8:00 PM

Amor Towles’s most recent novel, A Gentleman in Moscow, a New York Times best seller, centers on the tale of the fictional Count Alexander Rostov and his colorful life in Moscow’s Hotel Metropol in the early 1920s, following the Russian Revolution. Despite his reduced circumstances, after he is sentenced to house arrest and banished from his former luxury suite into a cramped garret, 110 steps up in the top of the grand hotel, the Count manages to meet and interact with a cast of memorable characters ranging from diplomats to movie stars to a 9-year-old girl named Nina.
   Born in the Boston area, and educated at Yale, Towles’ worked in the financial world for many years. He first garnered literary success in 2011 with his debut novel, The Rules of Civility, which takes place in Jazz-age Manhattan. Towles is adept at conjuring up earlier eras and populating them with unforgettable personalities. As The New Yorker wrote of A Gentleman in Moscow, "Towles gets good mileage from the considerable charm of his protagonist and the peculiar world he inhabits.”