A Gentleman in Moscow

Title: A Gentleman in Moscow
​by: Amor Towles

Discussion Questions:
www.amortowles.com/gentleman-moscow-amor-towles/gentleman-moscow-readers-guide/

• Why is Count Alexander Rostov put on house arrest?
• ​Who is Nina & how would you describe her after she introduces herself to the Count?
• How would you describe the Count, based on the memories shared by his old friend Mishka? (pgs. 82-83)
• How is the Count being stuck in the hotel on house arrest similar to the stay home & social distancing mandates associated with COVID19?
• Why does the count decide to throw himself from the roof of the Metropol at the end of book 2? What or who thwarts his plan? (P.165-166) 
• How is the Count's relationship with the women in the story (Nina, Marina, & Anna) different from his relationship & meeting with the triumvirate-- Emile & Andrey? 
• How does the Count react to being invited to dinner with the man who ordered his house arrest? (Osip Glebnikov) Why did Glebnikov want to keep meeting with the Count once a month? (p. 211-212) 
• ​How does the Count come to be in charge of Sofia (Nina's daughter?) What has happened to Leo (Nina's husband)? 
• ​What happens to Sofia at the end of Book 3? Why can't the Count stay with her as she recovers?  
• ​Why does the Count decide to get Sofia out of Russia? (And over to France) Why does he choose to remain behind?  
• What is the Count plotting at the end of Book V, as he locks up the Bishop, changes costume & Sofia begins altering her appearance after her concert? Where are they going?
  

Passages & Quotes:
​"Adversity presents itself in many forms & that if a man does not master his circumstances then he is bound to be mastered by them."  

​"But experience is less likely to teach us how to bid our dearest possessions adieu. For eventually, we come to hold our dearest possessions more closely than we hold our friends. We carry them from place to place, often at considerable expense & inconvenience; we dush & polish their surfaces & reprimand children for playing too roughly in their vicinity--all the while, allowing memories to invest them with greater & greater importance." 

"That sense of loss is exactly what we must anticipate, prepare for, & cherish to the last of our days; for it is only our heartbreak that finally refutes all that is ephemeral in love." 

" By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration--and our unwavering determination to withhold our opinion until we have engaged with them in every possible setting at every possible hour." 

"Life will follow her {Nina} in a taxi. It will bump into her by chance. It will work its way into her affections. And to do so, it will beg, barter, collude, & if necessary, resort to chicanery." 


My Rating of the Book:    /5

Book Trailer:
www.amortowles.com/