The descriptive writing is beautiful. The content is beyond me. The book itself is about Count Rostov, who brings a smile whenever he appears in his confined 30-year sojourn at the Metropole Hotel in Moscow from the late 1930's to the 1950's. Under house arrest this aristocrat relishes the finer things found here from literature to furniture to food.
It gives the reader a creative plot (imagine being confined to a hotel for most of your life) fascinating, well-developed characters, and a viewpoint of Soviet Russia that is intimate, if not appealing.
Obama even recommended it as one of the best 2017 book