It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life''Jay Gatsby is the man who has everything. But one thing will always be out of his reach ... Everybody who is anybody is seen at his glittering parties. Day and night his Long Island mansion buzzes with bright young things drinking, dancing and debating his mysterious character. For Gatsby - young, handsome, fabulously rich - always seems alone in the crowd, watching and waiting, though no one knows what for. Beneath the shimmering surface of his life he is hiding a secret: a silent longing that can never be fulfilled. And soon this destructive obsession will force his world to unravel.The Penguin English Library - collectable general readers'' editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century to the end of the Second World War.>

Autorentext
Francis Scott Fitzgerald was born in 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age a term he popularized in his short story collection Tales of the Jazz Age. His first novel, This Side of Paradise, was published in 1920 and was a tremendous critical and commercial success. Fitzgerald followed with The Beautiful and the Damned, The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night. He was working on The Last Tycoon when he died, in Hollywood, in 1940.