Amor Towles’s A Gentleman in Moscow: The Hotel as Spatial Structure of Power Dynamics

Abstract

The hotel space has been employed in many literary works as a point of reference to highlight, through intersecting life paths and ephemeral encounters, social practices, morals attitudes, and trends, mainly related to the modern subject. The objective of this paper is to explore a distinct perspective of the hotel as a space which shapes and is simultaneously shaped by power structures. Our research will focus on the hotel's dual function, as a luxury destination and at the same time as a shadowy and camouflaged punitive environment reflecting broader mechanisms of state surveillance in Amor Towles's novel A Gentleman in Moscow, revolving around the famous, luxurious and historic Metropol Hotel in Moscow. We will examine the way in which Count Rostov, the novel’s main character, experiences his lifelong house arrest in the Metropol’s plural and contrasted spaces, along with the tactics of control exercised over him. Drawing from Foucault and Agamben theories, we consider the Metropol Hotel as a heterotopic and biopolitical space where an individual is politically punished, socially excluded, and subjected to life exposure that turns them into a homo sacer bearing a bare life.