Amor Towles to Speak at Chautauqua

Amor Towles
A Gentleman in Moscow
3:30 p.m. Thursday, July 19, 2018 — Hall of Philosophy, Chautauqua, NY

A transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel, A Gentleman in Moscow immerses us in an elegantly drawn era with the story of Count Alexander Rostov. When, in 1922, Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the count is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him a doorway into a much larger world of emotional discovery. Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates Count Rostov’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.