A Gentleman in Moscow

Ein spannender, lebendiger und mitreißender Roman. Mit den Augen der Hauptfigur sehen wir die dramatischen Veränderungen in der EU zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts. Jahrhunderts. Graf Rostow scheint ein vorbildlicher und ethischer Beobachter des Zeitablaufs zu sein.

Once I started the book, I couldn't put it down until it was finished. I stayed up until 4.30 in the morning reading this. Weeks later, I've thought about the book many times since finishing. Amazing character work and interweaving of themes. This book truly makes you see people and the underlying current of humanity within them.

The story centers about Count Alexander Rostov who, in 1922, finds himself under house arrest in the Metropol Hotel for being an aristocrat. From then on he has to learn how to adjust the the new circumstances of his life in the elegant hotel. He is moved to a tiny attic room and soon the close quarters bring him together with an entire cast of endearing, loving, and eccentric characters who live and work in the Metropol. The world outside keeps moving forward, the Kremlin right across from the hotel an everpresent sign of the tumultuous times outside the count's small world. At the same time, he finds new worlds to explore in the people in the Metropol and forms strong friendships and bonds with a lot of people he otherwise might never have met. This is a wonderful calm and loving story about the young count who learns how big the world is even when it is reduced to only one building. The characters are all extremely well developed and all bring a richness and believability to the story that makes this a wonderful read.

Sometimes there are books that are so well-loved by customers that they recomend them to you for a change and this is one of them. After a nice chat with a lovely lady, who told me that she buys this book for all her friends and left with 3 copies yet again, I just had to get one myself and see the magic myself. It's easy to say that I had really high expactations and this book still blew me away. Lyrically written, witty, charming, enchanting, I can't praise Amor Towles enough for this masterpiece. A treasure to be remembered! 5 stars

A charming novel with a very different social perspective of life of an aristocrat under political upheaval in Russia.