Overview
As anyone who has enjoyed his work will tell you, Amor Towles is not just an award-winning bestselling novelist, he is the consummate craftsman of both language and plot.
A supreme storyteller, each of Towles’s three works of fiction has earned praise from critics and rapturous reviews from readers. His novels are marked by elegant prose, richly drawn descriptions, and layered characters who experience life deeply.
His first novel, Rules of Civility, which was published in 2011, was a bestseller and was named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the best books of 2011. It transports readers back to the glamour of Manhattan in 1938 where his engaging narrator, through a combination of bold ambition and blind chance, ascends in a man’s world.
His second novel, A Gentleman in Moscow, tells the story of Count Alexander Rostov, an elegant Russian aristocrat who in 1922 is sentenced by a Bolshevik tribunal to house arrest in the luxurious Metropol Hotel. Inside it he remains for the next 32 years, becoming a fixture and friend to hotel staff, meeting fascinating guests, and adapting to losing the world he grew up in. The hardcover edition took root on the New York Times bestseller list, staying for over 52 weeks, and was named one of the best books of 2016 by the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the San Francisco Chronicle, and NPR.
His most recent work, a magnificent comic road novel called The Lincoln Highway, debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. More recognition followed as it became a Today Show Read with Jenna Book Club Pick, one of the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2021, a Washington Post Best Book of the Year, one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2021, and was #1 on Amazon’s list of the Best Books of the Year.
Towles should feel right at home in our gorgeous Renée & Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, as he believes novels are quite symphonic. “Like in a great symphony, I like my novels to be composed of certain movements. There are crescendos and motifs, that peak over the course of the book played by different instruments in different tones yet tied together. I want, at the end of the symphony, for the final chords to give the listeners the satisfaction that yes, that ended in the right moment.”
Don’t miss this fascinating conversation as the literary sensation makes his Segerstrom Center debut!
