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Biography
American

Amor Towles

1964

Amor Towles is the author of A Gentleman in Moscow (2016), one of the most beloved novels of the twenty-first century — about Count Alexander Rostov, sentenced by a Bolshevik tribunal to spend the rest of his life inside Moscow's Metropol Hotel, where he builds a rich and meaningful existence over thirty-two years. The novel has sold over 5 million copies worldwide. Rules of Civility (2011) — set in 1930s New York — was his debut. The Lincoln Highway (2021), a picaresque road novel set in 1952, was a #1 New York Times bestseller.

Past sales0
PeriodContemporary
NationalityAmerican
1. Biography

A short life of the author

Amor Towles (b. 1964) was born on 20 October 1964 in Boston, Massachusetts. He studied English at Yale University and has an MA from Stanford. He worked in the investment industry for over twenty years before becoming a full-time writer.

Life and Career

Rules of Civility (2011) — set in 1938 New York and narrated by Katey Kontent, a young working-class woman navigating the upper reaches of Manhattan society — was a New York Times bestseller praised for its wit, period atmosphere, and narrative control.

A Gentleman in Moscow (2016) — in which Count Alexander Rostov, a former aristocrat, is sentenced in 1922 to house arrest in Moscow’s Metropol Hotel and proceeds to live there for the next thirty-two years, befriending the staff, raising a child, maintaining his dignity, falling in love, and quietly resisting the Soviet state — became one of the most universally adored novels of its decade. It sold over 5 million copies, was a Barack Obama recommended read, and was adapted into a Paramount+ series starring Ewan McGregor (2024).

The Lincoln Highway (2021) — about two brothers and two companions on a ten-day journey across America in 1952, told from rotating perspectives, each chapter covering a single day — was a #1 New York Times bestseller. Table for Two (2024) collected stories and a novella.

Major Works and Themes

Towles writes about character, civility, and the construction of a meaningful life within constraint. His novels are structurally elegant, historically immersive, and deeply humane. He is a formalist — each novel has a precise structural conceit — without being cold.

Key Works

  • A Gentleman in Moscow (2016)
  • The Lincoln Highway (2021)
  • Rules of Civility (2011)

Collecting Towles

A Gentleman in Moscow (2016, Viking) brings $30–$80. Rules of Civility (2011, Viking) — his debut — brings $40–$120.