By Amor Towles
Fiction
Publication Date: Sept. 6, 2016
Sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol Hotel in Moscow for writing a poem deemed to encourage revolt, Count Alexander Rostov manages to live the fullest of lives. Spread across four decades, this is in all ways a great novel. Throughout the presence of Stalin and Krushchev, Towles manages to make politics a dark, distant shadow by focusing instead on the charm, personal wisdom and philosophical insight of his main character. This is a wonderfully masterful encapsulation of modern Russian history as the Count slowly adjusts to his circumstances as a “Former Person,” making due with the attic room, to which he is banished after residing for years in a posh third-floor suite. “This is a book in which the cruelties of the age can’t begin to erase the glories of real human connection.”
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