A Gentleman in Moscow is a 2016 novel by Amor Towles. It is his second novel, published five years after his New York Times best seller, Rules of Civility (2011). Background The protagonist is the fictional Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, on 24 October 1889. He was raised on his Rostov family's estate "Idlehour" in Nizhny Novgorod. Rostov's godfather was his father's comrade in the cavalry, Grand Duke Demidov. When the Count's parents died of cholera within hours of each other in 1900, Grand Duke Demidov became the 11-year-old's guardian. Demidov counseled him to be strong for his sister Helena, because "...adversity presents itself in many forms, and if a man does not master his circumstances, then he is bound to be mastered by them." The Rostov siblings are aristocrats, making social visits to nearby estates by horse-drawn troika or sleigh. As a young man, the Count was sent out of the country (as was the custom at the time) by his grandmother for wounding Helena's suitor, a cad who broke her heart. Upon returning home from Paris after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, the Count was arrested. Inspiration and plot Towles's inspiration for the novel was his experience staying at luxury hotels, specifically, a hotel in Geneva, Switzerland, where some guests were permanent residents. He combined the idea of luxury hotels with his knowledge of Russia's long-time historical tradition of house arrest. The trial The Count is charged as a social parasite before a Bolshevik tribunal, with the expectation that he will be found guilty and shot. He is unrepentant, and eloquently refuses to confess. Because of a revolutionary poem attributed to him, the Count is spared a death sentence. Instead, he is placed under house arrest for life at his current residence, the Hotel Metropol in central Moscow. The hotel A military guard escorts the Count back to the Hotel Metropol, where he is ordered to vacate his luxurious suite and move to the cramped servant's quarters on the sixth floor. As time goes on, the Count cultivates a social circle of friends from his youth as well as selected residents, staff, and customers of the Hotel and its restaurants. These include a one-eyed cat, a young girl, a seamstress, a Russian chef, a French maître d'hotel and former circus juggler, a poet, an actress, an underemployed architect, an orchestra conductor, a prince, a