A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW by AMOR TOWLES (2016)

I don't believe I have ever read a book as delightfully charming as this one. It tells the story of the Russian Count Alexander Rostov, who returns to his home country in 1922, following the Bolshevic Revolution, and is arrested as an unrepentant aristocrat. His sentence is to be placed under house arrest in his home, the luxurious Metropol Hotel, under a sentence of death if he sets foot outside its doors. He is cultured, witty, and accustomed to the finest surroundings, but he accepts his exile to a tiny attic room with equanimity. As the years pass, he forms friendships with several unlikely hotel employees and guests, including the cranky chef at the luxury restaurant, the hotel seamstress, a famous actress, a Kremlin bureaucrat, and an American official. While his physical boundaries are limited, his emotional boundaries are transcended, particularly when he is left in charge of a young girl, whose welfare becomes the chief concern of his life.

Although Rostov never leaves the hotel, we are provided telling glimpses of the tumultuous years of Russian history from 1922 to 1954 through his interactions with hotel guests. But Rostov is always central to the action as he ingeniously maneuvers to provide his foster daughter with the life she deserves.

What makes this book charming is not so much its tale but the manner of its telling. Towles' prose is always as sophisticated and elegant as is his protagonist. The story itself is so highly unlikely as to be unbelievable, but that matters little because style is as important as substance in the world of Alexander Rostov.

I highly recommend this novel as a blessed relief from most current fiction offerings that portray social problems, personal problems, lives in turmoil, and so on and so on.