Amor Towles

Here is a Q and A for readers of TABLE FOR TWO by Amor Towels. “As a novelist, I’m a planner. I will spend several years laying out exactly what is going to happen in one of my books before I begin writing.”

When I finish writing a novel, I find myself wanting to head in a new direction. That’s why after writing Rules of Civility—which describes a year in the life of a young woman about to climb New York’s socioeconomic ladder—I was eager to write A Gentleman in Moscow—which describes three decades in the life of a Russian aristocrat who’s just lost everything. The Lincoln Highway allowed me to veer again in that the novel focuses on three eighteen-year-old boys on a journey in 1950s America that lasts only ten days.

First of all, if you have come to this Reader’s Guide because you have read A Gentleman in Moscow, I owe you my heartfelt thanks. I hope you enjoyed the book. For those interested in learning more about the background of the book or my process, I encourage you to browse this site where I have placed a variety of supporting materials. In particular, you may be interested in my Q&A (which answers some frequently asked questions) or my brief history of the Metropol Hotel.

Amor Towles, the bestselling author of Rules of Civility and A Gentleman in Moscow is poised to release his third novel, The Lincoln Highway. Unlike Towles’ previous books—one set in New York City in the 1930s and the other in Russia during the Bolshevik era—the new novel takes place in America in the 1950s.

You can find the interview I gave to the Wall Street Journal’s Lucy Feldman (while comfortably seated at the Russian Tea Room) here.

Read my short piece for Condé Nast Traveler which is on my great-great-grandfather’s hat box and his travels in the Belle Époque here.

Read Publisher’s Weekly’s recent profile of Amor Towles and his new novel, A Gentleman in Moscow, here. “Sitting over a cappuccino in Caffe Reggio in New York’s Greenwich Village, listening to the novelist Amor Towles speak about the Russian Revolution, it’s not difficult to imagine that this scene is taking place half a century ago…”

My interest in writing about the early twentieth century is neither a reflection of a love of history, nor a nostalgia for a bygone era. What has attracted me to the period is that it has a proximate distance to the present. It is near enough in time that it seems familiar to most readers, but far enough away that they have no firsthand knowledge of what actually happened. This provides me with the liberty to explore the narrow border between the unbelievably actual and the convincingly imagined.

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His novels Rules of Civility, A Gentleman in Moscow, and The Lincoln Highway have collectively sold more than six million copies and been translated into more than thirty languages. Both Bill Gates and President Barack Obama included A Gentleman in Moscow and The Lincoln Highway on their annual book recommendation lists.