Welcome to our Book Club!
Book Club discussions are held via Zoom on the last Thursday evening of odd-numbered months (with the exception of November, when we meet the Thursday prior to Thanksgiving)—7:00 p.m. start, Portland time. Our reading selections for 2023 were masterpieces from the Golden Age of Russian Literature (19th century), followed in 2024 with masterpieces from the Soviet era—the last of which was Mikhail Sholokhov’s The Don Flows Home to the Sea (a sequel to And Quiet Flows the Don), discussed in January, 2025. Currently we are continuing our exploration into Soviet history and culture via the historical fiction blockbuster, A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. Background information about the author and novel are provided below, along with links to discussion questions and to the discussion itself on March 27th. Come join us for stimulating conversation and insightful analysis.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Amor (an old family name of British Puritan origin, pronounced “AYmor”) Towles (pronounced “Towlz”) was born in 1964 and had an upper-middle class upbringing in the Boston area, parented by investment banker and philanthropist father Stokley Porter Towles and mother Eleanor Skinner (“Holly”) Hollingsworth. The parents later divorced, but not before having two more children—Amor’s brother Stokley Jr. and his sister Kimbrough (along with two stepbrothers from a second marriage). Amor was already writing fiction at the age of 10 when he decided to put one of his stories in a bottle and throw it into the Atlantic Ocean, resulting in a serendipitous outcome as magical as any in his novels—the bottle discovered several weeks later by New York Times journalist/editor Harrison Salisbury, who would then strike up a correspondence with Amor that lasted for many years. Amor attended Yale and upon graduation was awarded a two-year fellowship to teach in China, only to have it fall through due to the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. He then matriculated to Stanford for a graduate degree in English, his MA thesis a short story cycle called “The Temptation of Pleasure” (published in Paris Review). Moving to New York City’s East Village, he began work on his first novel but soon “felt a little lonely, a little claustrophobic and…broke.” For a change of scenery and to make ends meet, he joined in partnership with a friend to start an investment firm, thus emulating his dad’s career path. The business proved successful, and the partnership lasted 21 years—though all the while Amor continuing to work on that first novel: “I knew if I stopped writing fiction that I would end up very unhappy.” When Rules of Civility become a bestseller in 2011, he retired from the investment firm and began work on A Gentleman from Moscow, which was published in 2016 to international acclaim. Amor & wife Maggie live in Manhattan, collect fine art and antiques, and have 2 kids.
ABOUT THE NOVEL
A Gentleman in Moscow was on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list for 59 weeks and has been translated into several languages, including Russian. 462 pages in length, it’s divided into 5 “Books” nestled between a prologue and an “Afterward”.
Charming and humorous, the novel is also transfixing in its unique depiction of the crazed cruelty, dogmatism, and hypocrisy of the times. Yet central to the plot is love.
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