These majestic surroundings and my freedom to enjoy them are not lost on me as I pull myself out of the story Amor Towles weaves in A Gentleman in Moscow (2016). Towles is a household name and over the course of the past eleven years (since the publication on Rules of Civility in 2011) he has acquired a well-deserved following. This, however, is my first Towles’ novel. I scan the mountains around me as moment by moment they glow deeper purple red a the sun sinks further toward the far western horizon before I return to the Count and the world of Moscow’s grand Metropol hotel; the contrast between his life and my own in this moment could not be more pronounced.