Fiction

I highly recommend it. During the Russian Bolshevik revolution, Count Alexander Rostov avoids the fate which most of his relatives meet, assassination or death in a labor camp, because in his youth he wrote a poem beloved by the Bolshevik peasantry. Instead he is held in house arrest in a historic hotel in Red Square. The author is able to make even the long dull days and decades of incarceration seem real and filled with life. The many and varied guests of the hotel become his family and the finely crafted details in the first half of the book lead up to an exciting turn of events for the finale. Even though, as a member of the working class, I would fit more in with the Bolsheviks, I really loved Count Rostov's aristocratic, suave character. And Rostov's character changes from indifference of the privileged class to the ethic of a man who loves his work. I have listened to this book twice on Audible and will listen to it again I am sure. - Amor Towles is a master storyteller, maybe up there with Tolstoy.