A Gentleman in Moscow: The worldwide bestseller

But imagining what might happen if one’s circumstances were different was the only sure route to madness.

Vyshinsky: And your occupation? Rostov: It is not the business of gentlemen to have occupations. Vyshinsky: Very well then. How do you spend your time? Rostov: Dining, discussing. Reading, reflecting. The usual rigmarole. Vyshinsky: And you write poetry? Rostov: I have been known to fence with a quill.

Arriving late, thought the Count with a sigh. What a delicacy of youth.

Alexander Rostov was neither scientist nor sage; but at the age of sixty-four he was wise enough to know that life does not proceed by leaps and bounds. It unfolds. At any given moment, it is the manifestation of a thousand transitions. Our faculties wax and wane, our experiences accumulate, and our opinions evolve—if not glacially, then at least g