The Count is a likeable character, a gentleman of leisure who has – unrepentantly – fallen out of favour with the Bolsheviks, and who has some handy gold coins stacked in the legs of one of his pieces of furniture with which to maintain his lifestyle. Change creeps in subtly – the ballroom is now not used for debutantes but for political meetings, and Party officials replace the management. There are many themes woven through the novel – Russian music, art, literature, poetry, freedom of expression, classic movies, the founding of the USSR, and since the book covers the period 1922 to 1954, it is also a view on the history of the city and the changes in society. Outside the hotel, the world moves on in Communist Russia, but inside, tradition and the lifestyles of the wealthy travellers remain – from seamstresses and flower shops and bars on site, labyrinth rooms and corridors, vast expanses of marble and gilt, to immaculate, superbly well informed and experienced waiters in the restaurant and bar.

The hotel is a kind of bubble in which time has been suspended, but it also represents the city in miniature. Readers will find this novel very entertaining and suspenseful – and the best bit, I can assure you, is the ending, and in order to understand it, you will have to remember what you read right at the start of the novel. He is as intriguing and multi-faceted as the rest of the gallery of charming rogues working in the hotel. The Count is a surprising character – he is a gentleman and a gentle man, yet he can handle a gun and is not afraid to use it (which is a hugely enjoyable moment!), nor is he afraid to pull strings and do a bit of theft and smuggling on the side. Towles conjures up a romantic and fascinatingly intricate pre-WWII-era hotel in Moscow, the “Metropol Hotel”, in which the main character, “Count Alexander Rostov”, lives. It has a fin-de-siècle feel to it, of events passing and times moving on, and of the struggle to adapt to changes or stay in the previous era. This is a stylized, studied novel, about a stylish gentleman, written in elegant style. A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles (Published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House, New York, Sept.

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