"If a man does not master his circumstances then he is bound to be mastered by them."
- Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

This book can be best described as a witty, insightful, elegant, classy and a delightful historical fiction.

Count Alexander Rustov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, who had never worked a single day in his life, was sentenced by the Bolshevik tribunal to a house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel. He was considered an unrepentant aristocrat by the Bolsheviks. With some of the most important events in Russian history unfolding outside his hotel, all he could do was observe.

Perhaps it was his restricted reach to the outside world that helped him introspect and enter a much larger world of emotional discovery.