“I thought, this is a nice hotel, but imagine if you had to live in it? In the elevator on my way upstairs, I thought, that is an interesting idea for a book.
"In 2009, I arrived at the hotel in Geneva for the eighth time, and when I walked into the hotel I recognised people in the lobby from the year before. I was in London, Los Angeles and Geneva for a week every year meeting with clients. “Travelling with my firm, I stayed in hotels on an annual basis. He started writing the book four years ago - but the germ of an idea came three years before that. "It is this - being a person of honour, that allows him to navigate the three decades in the hotel.” "But he has two things going for him his upbringing as a gentleman and ingrained optimism. “ has lost his family his possessions and his social standing, and more importantly, he is about to watch as everything he loves about Russian life is going to be uprooted systematically by the new regime. It’s a glorious read - sumptuous, charming, and eminently readable. It details his life, adapting to the changes in Russia - and shows some endearing friendships - with a chef, an actress, and a nine-year-old girl. Set in Russia from 1922 up to the 50s, the novel centres on the Count Alexander Rostov, an aristocrat who is on house arrest in an attic in Moscow’s Metropol Hotel. We’re talking about his second published novel, A Gentleman in Moscow. "If I was 30, I might crave social interaction during the day and I might yearn to be out of the house because the children are crying or driving me crazy, but I’ve waited my whole life to write fiction, and I am thrilled to spend six hours a day working on it.” I love my colleagues, but I’m very happy writing full-time. What was it like, at 48, leaving the workplace to write from home? When that became a bestseller I retired.” "I learned a great deal from that failed project, and I applied all that I had learned to my second novel - and that became Rules of Civility. “I wrote a book on the job for seven years, which I didn’t like, so I put it in a drawer. I was always a bookish nerdy writer as a kid, and in high school and college and graduate school. “What all my old friends find shocking, is that I was in finance, not that I had written a book.
And while his clients must have been surprised at this divergence, his friends were not. And his first book, Rules of Civility, a New York Times bestseller, was released when he was still working in finance full-time. “You are studying the world on a daily basis.”ĭuring this time, Amor had been writing. “It’s a fascinating field”, says Amor, on the phone from London, where he is in the middle of a publicity tour.
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