Review and recommendations by Simon Church, Book Stop, Tavistock

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

Published by Windmill - paperback £8.99

Charting the life of a Russian aristocrat from shortly after the October Revolution of 1917 to the death of Stalin and Kruschev's ascent to power, the story gives a flavour of the times. However, its focus is very much on the elegant but increasingly fading glory of the Hotel Metropol in Moscow over the passing decades and the main protagonist, Count Alexander Rostov, sentenced by fate and the Communist Party, to a lifetime's house arrest within the hotel's confines.

With hints of Wodehouse on the one hand and Voltaire on the other, Towles provides us with a warm, light-hearted and entertaining romp. Yet his insight is profound, not only in relation to the turmoil being inflicted beyond the walls of the hotel, but in its consideration of the main protagonist’s optimism and his propensity to see the best in people and of the relative merits of accepting one's lot over raging against the machine.

The denouement is worthy of the best action thriller and I understand that the rights have just been sold to Kenneth Brannah...

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