The Great Gatsby

The original 1925 edition.

Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, The Great Gatsby depicts narrator Nick Carraway’s interactions with mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and Gatsby’s obsession to reunite with his former lover, Daisy Buchanan. The novel was inspired by a youthful romance Fitzgerald had with a socialite, and by parties he attended on Long Island’s North Shore in 1922.
After its publication in 1925, The Great Gatsby received mixed reviews from literary critics who believed that it did not hold up to Fitzgerald’s previous writing and thus signaled the end of the author’s literary achievements. However, during World War II the novel faced a critical and scholarly re-examination, and it soon became a core part of most American high school curricula and a focus of American popular culture.
Numerous stage and film adaptations followed in the subsequent decades. The novel was most recently adapted to film in 2013 by director Baz Luhrmann, while modern scholars emphasize the novel’s treatment of social class, inherited wealth compared to those who are self-made, race, environmentalism, and its cynical attitude towards the American dream.
The Great Gatsby is widely considered to be a literary masterwork and a contender for the title of the Great American Novel.