Wow. This book is unbelievably good. A masterpiece of a story with beautiful writing and wonderful characters.

Count Rostov is one of the best male characters I’ve had the privilege of reading. He is the very essence of gentleman.

“The Count took pride in wearing a well-tailored jacket; but he took greater pride in knowing that a gentleman’s presence was best announced by his bearing, his remarks, and his manners. Not by the cut of his coat.”

It’s laugh out loud funny and a tear jerker. I savoured every word. Truly a charming story and one of my favourite reads in 2018.

UPDATE: Bill Gates agrees with me! Read his review and recommendation for A Gentleman in Moscow as one of his top summer reads.

SYNOPSIS

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 hotel’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 count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.

“If a man does not master his circumstances then he is bound to be mastered by them.”

Follow Up

• Read Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

My Book 49 of 2018

A Gentleman in Moscow: A Novel

My rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Published: 2016

Genre: Literary / historical fiction

Pages: 462

“After all, what can a first impression tell us about someone we’ve just met for a minute in the lobby of a hotel? For that matter, what can a first impression tell us about anyone? Why, no more than a chord can tell us about Beethoven, or a brushstroke about Botticelli. By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration—and our unwavering determination to withhold our opinion until we have engaged with them in every possible setting at every possible hour.”