The best-selling novel A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles tells the story of the Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, a Russian aristocrat sentenced to house arrest in the Hotel Metropol in the early years of Communist Russia. The Count was punished because he had been credited with writing an inflammatory political poem during the years of the Russian Revolution. Though the Count struggles to find a meaning for his life when he first begins his sentence, he soon discovers that he is able to live a full life despite his confinement. Themes in the novel explore the changes made in Russian culture during the transition from the time before the Bolshevik takeover of Russia to the beginning of the Cold War, the importance of the arts, and the inability to deal with decreased importance on manners and proper etiquette.
