A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

[Greg]

At the end of the Russian Revolution The Count, Alexander Rostov is brought up on charges for being royalty. Rather than sentence him to death, he becomes a non person under permanent house arrest in the Metropole Hotel. And for the rest of his life he stays in the confines of the hotel while the outside world changes around him.

I don't read a lot of straight up literature but this book caught my eye. That might be why I found the book initially very slow going. For the first 200 pages I kept asking myself when the plot might kick in. It was the beauty of the language that kept me going up to that point when the book finally sort of lurched into gear. On the one hand it dives deep in to the manners of a gentleman in the early parts of the 20th Century. It's a world that I haven't come across so specifically in the books I read.

I did finally get caught up in the world of the Count and I wanted to see how this book would play out.

[cranefly]

I was curious to know the language it was originally written in.  Well, English, as the author's name suggests.  But then I stumbled onto this.

The book has been translated into over 35 languages including Russian. In the summer of 2017, the novel was optioned by EOne and the British director Tom Harper to be made into a 16-hour miniseries starring Kenneth Branagh.

It's still in production.  But coming to a miniseries near you real soon now.

The book sounds intriguing.

[Greg]

16 hours should do it. The joy of the book is it's slow pace and it's ability to be sidetracked into other stories and footnotes. There is a 2 hour feature film in there but you wouldn't get any of the feel of the book and the Metropole Hotel.