For our next Staff Pick, we’ve chosen A Gentleman in Moscow. From the New York Times bestselling author of Rules of Civility, this transporting novel tells the story of a Russian count who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel across from the Kremlin.
We absolutely love this novel, but what we love even more is how much Amor Towles understands the value of the library: “Many an observer would define a library as a place you go to get the book you want; but that isn’t quite right. A library is the place you go to get the book you don’t know you want. The book you’re going to end up with is the one that happens to be on the shelf just to the left of the one you came looking for; and that book promises you an instance of unanticipated illumination.”
Click to read a letter from Towles to librarians.
Here’s what we’re saying:
“Prepare to fall in love with Count Alexander Rostov, an aristocrat in 1922 Moscow, sentenced by a Bolshevik tribunal to house arrest and forced to live out his days in The Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. I didn’t ever want this book to end.”-Kelly
“A transporting novel about a Russian count who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel across from the Kremlin. You will laugh, you will cry, you will fall in love with these characters!”-Chelsea
“Written with grace and wit, A Gentleman in Moscow is a love poem to old world Russia, and the seemingly small occurrences in life that unfold into entirely new paths. Count Alexander Rostov is now the one person, fictional or not, with whom I’d most like to break bread.” -Hugo
Read A Letter to Librarians by Amor Towles.
