Editor’s note: This historic fiction is beautifully written. Towles adds well-researched context along with poignant social commentary to make it the best book I’ve read in many years. I’m planning to re-read it so that I might pick up more of the type of excerpts you will see below. I noted at least a half dozen worth remembering on my first read.
Favorite excerpt:
“When you reach our age, Vasily, it all goes by so quickly. Whole seasons seem to pass without leaving the slightest mark on our memory…But surely there is comfort to be taken from that. For even as weeks begin racing by in a blur for us, they are making the greatest of impressions upon our children. When one turns seventeen and begins to experience that first period of real independence, one’s senses are so alert, one’s sentiments so finely attuned to every conversation, every look, every laugh may be writ indelibly upon one’s memory….Perhaps the aggregate experience of Time is constant and thus for our children to establish such vivid impressions of this particular June, we must relinquish our claims upon it”.
“So that they might remember, we must forget”, Vasily summed up.
“Exactly”, said the Count.