A Gentleman in Moscow

Amor Towles has collated a selection of historical and contemporary images for The Lincoln Highway.

First of all, if you have come to this Reader’s Guide because you have read A Gentleman in Moscow, I owe you my heartfelt thanks. I hope you enjoyed the book. For those interested in learning more about the background of the book or my process, I encourage you to browse this site where I have placed a variety of supporting materials. In particular, you may be interested in my Q&A (which answers some frequently asked questions) or my brief history of the Metropol Hotel.

“Who will save Rostov from the intrusions of state if not the seamstresses, chefs, bartenders and doormen? In the end, Towles’s greatest narrative effect is not the moments of wonder and synchronicity but the generous transformation of these peripheral workers, over the course of decades, into confidants, equals and, finally, friends. With them around, a life sentence in these gilded halls might make Rostov the luckiest man in Russia.” —The New York Times Book Review

"Episodic, empathetic, and entertaining, Count Rostov’s long transformation occurs against a lightly sketched background of upheaval, repression, and war... Towles is determined to chart the course of the individual." —Publisher’s Weekly.

"How delightful that in an era as crude as ours this finely composed new novel by Amor Towles stretches out with old-World elegance. A Gentleman in Moscow offers a chance to sink back into a lost attitude of aristocracy — equal parts urbane and humane — just what we might expect from the author of that 2011 bestseller Rules of Civility. But if Towles’s story is an escape we crave, it is also, ironically, a story of imprisonment..." –Washington Post

"Beyond the door of the luxurious ­Hotel Metropol lies Theater Square and the rest of Moscow, and beyond its city limits the tumultuous landscape of 20th-century Russia. The year 1922 is a good starting point for a Russian epic, but for the purposes of his sly and winning second ­novel, Amor Towles forgoes descriptions of icy roads and wintry dachas and instead retreats into the warm hotel lobby."

How delightful that in an era as crude as ours this finely composed new novel by Amor Towles stretches out with old-World elegance. “A Gentleman in Moscow” offers a chance to sink back into a lost attitude of aristocracy — equal parts urbane and humane — just what we might expect from the author of that 2011 bestseller “Rules of Civility.” But if Towles’s story is an escape we crave, it is also, ironically, a story of imprisonment...

To inhabit a place like the Kremlin is not to reside, it is to defend one’s self. Oppression creates revolt, revolt obliges precautions, precautions increase dangers, and this long series of actions and reactions engenders a monster; that monster is despotism, which has built itself a house at Moscow. The giants of the antediluvian world,…

What follows is a brief anecdotal history of the Metropol Hotel - but for a glimpse of the hotel today, you can watch the interview that ran on CBS Sunday Morning with me and CBS senior correspondent (and former Moscow bureau chief), Liz Palmer.

This unique map by Alex Coulter was commissioned for A Gentleman in Moscow. You can also see the contemporary Google map.