I read A Gentleman in Moscow long after it was known to be a great book. I hadn’t heard of it. I was rabbit-holing through one of the book threads on Reddit when someone mentioned how it contained one of the most truly beautiful scenes in all literature; of course, I had to read it. For a couple of weeks, it occupied my mind. It took up all available space and carried me away into the story, into this magnificent, opulent, dangerous world, utterly and completely.

It’s been a while since I experienced such total immersion.

Though I am always ready and willing to suspend my disbelief, it is rare that a writer of any genre takes advantage of my blatant and obvious plea for escape. I wish more of them did. Amor Towles didn’t hesitate. He snatched me off my couch, transporting me to the Metropol Hotel in Moscow in 1921. When I finally closed the book, I tried to remember the last story that captured me so completely, and honestly, it’s hard to recall. I don’t know which was the last one, but I can list the titles that did it here. It’s a short list. It could fit on a Post-it note:

• • Coming Through Slaughter

• • Love in the Time of Cholera

• • The Bridge of San Louis Rey

• • The Grapes of Wrath

• • The Lies of Locke Lamora

• • The Witching Hour

• • Dune

• • A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

I read a lot of books. I love them. They are my life. I fall into a story; I do. I step into the fictive world of each author, sure. But rarely do I step into that world so thoroughly that I forget who I am, that I forget my troubles, that I lose track of time itself. That is the trick—and purpose—of literature, of stories. To enchant you. Stories are designed to transport. If a story doesn’t achieve this magic trick, then either the story is broken, or the reader is.

But A Gentleman in Moscow does more.

Towles writes brilliantly. His attention to craft and his willingness to recede into the background as the author of the story allow the reader to disappear. But there’s more to great stories than this, and A Gentleman achieves one of the finest goals, unintended by the author: it instructs its reader. This isn’t an overt direction. It’s not a self-help book. But Count Ilych Alexander Rostov’s nature, his habits, his demeanor, and most of all, the way he navigates his misfortune illustrate a man who lives according to an inner code. Whether it is the cardinal virtues of St. Augustine, the precepts of the Stoics, or the eight-fold path of Buddhism, Rostov’s internal guidance system means he is unswayed by circumstances.

This is a worthy lesson for anyone.

History is a long ribbon of misfortune, punctuated by brief periods of rest. Vicious winds blow us off center. We find ourselves prospering, only to suffer grievous loss. We discover a windfall, only to inherit a similar debt. Years and years of general well-being erupt into a groundswell of stupidity. Like now. Our present circumstances are awful. We are caught in the ugly jaws of an us-vs-them universe. It doesn’t matter which party you belong to. Politics are fractured. Shattered. Our arguments are yellow with vitriol. Black with bad humors. We can’t even be in the same room with our compatriots, much less those whose politics oppose ours.

Not unlike Russia in 1917.

Not too much like Russia in 1917. I’m not a historian, obviously. But our world seems like it can be broadly understood in the same bilateral fashion as the Russian depicted in A Gentleman in Moscow. Ours may have more gradation. Where Russia was the Bolsheviks-vs-the Aristocracy, America is kind of like Billionaires-vs-Everyone Else, with Everyone Else currently at war with each other on every front.

This brings me back to the lessons of A Gentleman in Moscow.

These instructions are in the book, but the limited series starring Ewan McGregor makes them obvious. Rostov is blessed with a classic liberal arts education. He’s read Ovid. He understands art. He appreciates refinement. More importantly, he is guided by the classic virtues of temperance, prudence, fortitude, and justice. You may, if you want to get all pedantic, argue that Rostov’s education is a product of his aristocracy, a system that is anathemic to democracy and, therefore, not in keeping with the tenets of our culture of equality. But that misses the point. It’s not about the nobility of his birth, it’s about the durability of his character.

Rostov is Job for the Russian Revolution.

He is stripped of his station. His family is either dead or missing. His ancestral home’s been burned to the ground. His peers are executed or live in hiding. He is moved unceremoniously from opulent agency to inglorious imprisonment. Of a sort. He still wears a tuxedo to dinner. He’s still referred to (briefly) as ‘Your Excellency,’ and he’s still walking around in one of the most expensive hotels in the world (at that time). So it’s a prison, but it’s carpeted in velvet. Fine. Sure. But it’s still not about that.

A Gentleman in Moscow is about integrity, grace, and love.

We could do with a dose of the private virtues—a code of ethics as we are all locked into our own version of the Metropol. Towles cooked up a delicious metaphor for the absurdity of life: a man trapped in a luxurious prison. To leave is to die. To stay is to suffer indignation, loss, harassment, and an army of hyper-masculine jut-jawed Jethros bedeviling decent people and maybe shooting them on occasion. All while enjoying a lovely glass of Chateau d’Yquem and listening to Rachmaninov. At a critical moment, Rostov talks with his friend, a Prince who is trying to blend into a classical quartet, as their humble violinist. The Prince asks the Count how he can joke when, at any minute, the Red Army might drag him out into the snow and put a bullet through his noble dome. The Count replies:

If I thought about it all for a minute I would descend into a very dark world.

Which is the foundation of absurdism.

Which is an understandable position for any reasonable person. This world is clearly under the administration of a highly caffeinated honey badger. So let’s just stay drunk and make weird art and give the finger to reality. But there is another way, a braver path, and that is to maintain the classic virtues handed down since Socrates was sucking his thumb. They endure because to embody their principles is to know how to behave, how to act, and how to endure any situation from the best to the worst. Like Rostov, one can employ fortitude and grace even in the teeth of an insurrection. It is a worthy lesson.

It may be the hardest lesson to learn and the most challenging demeanor to maintain when threatened with death. Death of a state. Death of an idea. Death of one’s very framework. Even actual death of friends, of family—of distant strangers. One can render justice without violence. One can chasten through temperance. Once can allow prudence to direct. One can turn to fortitude for support. They are not the opposite of activism. They support it. They are not poisonous to integrity—they are its essence. The Stoics knew this. St Augustine knew this. Aristotle knew this.

With some effort, and maybe through the benefit of great literature like Towles’ book, perhaps the classic virtues will regain their status as perpetual landmarks. Maybe we can all take a minute to appreciate Towles’ brilliant metaphor and recognize that we’re all stuck in this fucking Russian hotel on pain of death which should give us enough motivation to, perhaps, be gracious despite everything.