Published by Viking in 2016, the book is available on Amazon in hardcover, paperback, Kindle, or audiobook formats, as well as at your local library or through the Libby App. The audiobook, read by Nicolas Guy Smith, complements Towles’s writing style, which is more of a narration of life events.

Set in Moscow, Russia, 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is an unrepentant aristocrat sentenced by a Bolshevik tribunal to house arrest in one of Moscow’s luxury hotels: the Metropol across from the Kremlin. Count Alexander makes friends with the staff members: André, the Maître D; Émile, the chef; Marina, the seamstress; and one guest, a young girl of nine, Nina. The Count and Nina explore the hotel as they develop an unbreakable friendship. So when she returns to the hotel in her twenties with her five-year-old daughter, Sophia, in tow and asks Alexander to look after her, he can’t refuse. Alexander raises Sophia as his own, keeping to the rules of his incarceration.

Over the years of Count Alexander’s house arrest, Towles explores the ups and downs of life, moving from mansions to a tin-can room, letting go of possessions, saying goodbye to friends, staring into the abyss, and climbing out of it. Still, since his writing style is telling rather than showing, the impact lacks emotion and doesn’t connect as much with the audience, which is the book’s downfall. 

The narrative style made it hard for the characters to grow into their own skin; readers couldn’t get a true sense of them or really relate to them. It left the book feeling flat and emotionless, which is why this is only a 2.5-star read.