How did the structure and layout of the book help the author tell the story? Was it successful in doing so this way? Did the footnotes help?ĥ. Why do you think that the author made the protagonist an aristocrat? How does the title of the book tie into that?Ĥ. Did you like the premise of the book? Was it believable that an aristocrat was under house arrest for more than 30 years?ģ. Having read A Gentleman in Moscow, who would you recommend it to?Ģ. After three years of plotting, they pull it off, and 'with the very first spoonful one finds oneself transported to the port of Marseille - where the streets teem with sailors, thieves, and madonnas, with sunlight and summer, with languages and life.Please put your comments for A Gentleman in Moscow book club discussion questions in the comments area below.ġ. When the outside world makes itself felt, it's usually as an excuse for a charming caper of some kind: One episode has the Count, the chef, and the maitre d' conspire to scrounge the ingredients for a perfect bouillabaisse from war-depleted Moscow. Russia and all of its sufferings seems incidental to the plot - the book could have taken place in a grand hotel in Paris or London or New York just as easily. It would slay the dish with a blow to the head and drag it behind its chariot until it tested the fortitude of every man in Troy. When a sinister hotel waiter (and Bolshevik stooge) suggests the wrong wine to accompany Latvian stew, the Count thinks, 'The Rioja? Now there was a wine that would clash with the stew as Achilles clashed with Hector.

'A Gentleman in Moscow' is a novel that aims to charm, not be the axe for the frozen sea within us.Īnd then there are the digressive flights. He is not the king of infinite space, exactly, but he does live a full and rich life according to the principle that, 'If one did not master one's circumstances, one was bound to be mastered by them.' Anyways, thus confined, Rostov passes the decades making a whole world out of a hotel and the people in it - a precocious 9-year-old, a moody chef, the French maître d', and so on. 'The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n,' Milton's charismatic Satan tells us - although the finest hotel in Moscow, with its restaurants and barber and elegant clientele, is a bit of a stretch for the fiery pits of damnation (or the snowdrifts of Siberia, for that matter).

How?Ĭount Alexander Rostov - recipient of the Order of Saint Andrew, member of the Jockey Club, Master of the Hunt - is a 'Former Person.' Russia's new Soviet masters have sentenced him, improbably enough, to house arrest in Moscow's luxurious Metropol hotel, where he lives out his days decorating the dining room with his bon mots and dashing around like Eloise, if Eloise were set in a twee version of Stalinist Russia. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title A Gentleman in Moscow Author Amor Towles

Towles a gentleman in moscow