Rules of Civility (2011) is the dazzling debut novel by Amor Towles, a love letter to 1930s New York City that follows Katey Kontent, a sharp-witted secretary whose life transforms over one fateful year. After a chance encounter with the enigmatic banker Tinker Grey at a Greenwich Village jazz bar on New Year’s Eve 1937, Katey and her boardinghouse roommate Eve Ross are swept into Manhattan’s high society—a world of penthouse parties, art galleries, and ruthless ambition. But when a car accident fractures their trio, Katey navigates betrayals, reinventions, and the shadow of the Great Depression with sardonic grace.
Towles’ prose crackles with period authenticity, name-dropping Cole Porter and Dorothy Parker while dissecting class mobility and self-invention. The title nods to George Washington’s 110 “Rules of Civility”—a motif for the unspoken codes governing Katey’s ascent.
For similar reads, try The Great Gatsby (1925) for another Jazz Age social climber, or Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow (2016) for more wit and historical sweep.
