A Gentleman in Moscow

by Amor Towles

“Would you like to play a game?” he asked.

The Thimble Game and Zut! The thimble game that the Count plays with the young Sofia at Marina’s suggestion in the 1938 section of the book springs from my childhood. My great grandmother was a Boston Brahmin who lived until she was a hundred in a stately house in Brookline. When my cousins and I visited (in our little blue blazers), she would welcome us into her sitting room. After the appropriate amount of polite conversation, she would inform us that she had hidden several thimbles in the room and that whoever found one would receive a dollar—prompting a good deal of scurrying about to her satisfaction. In the 1952 section of the book, when Sofia is a young woman, the Count and she customarily play a very different game—the game of Zut! which they play while waiting for their dinner to be served in the Boyarsky. This is also a family game, but one that my wife and I invented to play with our young children under circumstances that were similar to the Count’s and Sofia’s. Which is to say, while waiting for dinner to be served. When my son was eight and my daughter five, their favorite restaurant in New York City was a small family-owned Italian spot called Paul & Jimmy’s. (It’s still one of their favorites). Once our order was placed, we would launch into a few rounds of Zut!, guaranteeing that the children remained glued to their seats as dinner was being prepared.