A Gentleman in Moscow — A Lesson in Purpose and Sophistication

A pure joy — that’s the best way I can describe A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. Not only will you learn lessons in sophistication, but more importantly, what it means to have purpose.

Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, the main character, is an aristocratic gentleman who is imprisoned by a Bolshevik tribunal and placed under house arrest inside the Metropol. The Metropol is a real hotel in the center of Moscow that was built prior to the Russian Revolution in 1917. The book in general seems historically accurate, although I did not know much about the Bolsheviks and the history of the Soviet Union prior to reading A Gentleman in Moscow.

When Count Rostov is imprisoned in 1922, he loses his freedom to the confines of the Metropol, but the beautiful irony becomes clear as he discovers a world arguably richer and more abundant with life than the one outside. The characters he befriends, from the executive chef of the Boyarsky, to its head waiter, and a small girl, all capture his imagination and help provide him with purpose in his enclosed world.

“A man must master his circumstances or otherwise be mastered by them.” The Count always reminds himself of this noble truth. Instead of dwelling in the darkness of his perpetual situation, he makes every effort to find meaning and hope in every…