Book Club discussion

**Here are some thoughts and discussion points from our session—feel free to add your thoughts below!**

- Personal reflection: **If you were placed under house arrest in a grand hotel for decades, like the Count, and could only bring three personal items (excluding essentials like clothes and toiletries), what would you bring and why?**

- **What stood out to us in the book?**
Changing identity, shifting purpose, the passage of time, the food at the Metropol Hotel, being isolated from the events in Russia yet feeling their impact all the same, references to *Casablanca*, and the secret room.

- **What is the Count's version of purpose?**
He starts with one kind of purpose—reading books, eating well—then gradually shifts, taking a job as a waiter, becoming a father, and forming a new family in the absence of his own. The Count loses his official status but finds new roles (waiter, mentor, father figure). His purpose evolves from survival and self-centeredness to selflessness, finding meaning through love, relationships, and quiet acts of defiance against his circumstances.

- **The Metropol Hotel as a microcosm of Russia**
How does Towles use the setting to reflect the changes in Russian society over the years? How is the outside world brought in?
- *The Bishop* embodies everything Stalin has imposed on Russia—removing wine labels from bottles, enforcing restrictions.
- Nina never returns, symbolising the fate of so many who were caught in the shifting tides of history.

- **What did you think of the pace?**
- The novel spans over 30 years. How does the passage of time affect the Count?
- Did you feel the weight of time in the narrative? Did it feel slow or full of life to you?

- **Fun facts!**
- The book's structure is unusual: it starts in June 1922 with the Count entering the hotel, then jumps forward in a pattern—1 day later, 2 days later, 5 days, 10 days, 3 weeks, 6 weeks, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, 4 years, 8 years, and finally 16 years later. Then, time reverses!
- Every chapter title starts with the letter *A*.
- There are subtle elements of *magic* throughout—bees, one-eyed cats, the secret room—reinforcing the novel’s storytelling quality.

- **Did any of the relationships in the novel stand out to you as particularly moving or meaningful?**
- Which characters had the greatest impact on the Count’s life?
- *Nina* as a child and later as a young woman.
- *Mishka*, the Count’s poet friend.
- *Anna Urbanova*, his romantic partner.
- *Abraham*, the handyman on the roof.
- *Sofia*, Nina’s daughter—Towles himself identifies her as the most significant relationship in the novel.
- *Osip Glebnikov*, the high-ranking Soviet official.

- **Do you think the ending should have been different?**
- Should the Count have left Russia?
- He could have chosen to be with Sofia, but he stayed—was this because of his love for Russia, the place he had always called home, or was there another reason?

- **Did you watch the TV series?** What are your thoughts?