Some novelists define the age in which they write and few writers did so more effectively than F. Scott Fitzgerald. He coined the term 'Jazz Age' for the era of febrile pleasure-seeking that followed the First World War and he provided its most characteristic fiction in his finest novel, The Great Gatsby. The short narrative focuses on the enigmatic, fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby who throws wild and legendary parties while yearning for the elusive Daisy Buchanan, once his lover and now married to someone else. Rumors about Gatsby and the source of his wealth abound. Perhaps he was a German spy during the War. Possibly he once murdered a man. More convincingly, he is said to have connections with bootleggers and gangsters. Narrator Nick Carraway, Daisy's cousin, is the man who observes Gatsby's downfall. Renting a property next to Gatsby's mansion, venue for the glamorous parties, he befriends him, intrigued by the mystery that surrounds him. Gatsby persuades Nick to reintroduce him to Daisy and the two resume their affair. Tom Buchanan, Daisy's husband, is himself involved in an adulterous relationship with another woman but he is infuriated by his wife's infidelity when he discovers it. Gatsby struggles to convince Daisy that she should leave Tom; Tom threatens to reveal the secrets of Gatsby's past. The scene is set for the novel's culmination and the tragedies to unfold. The Great Gatsby is a poetic and moving study of a man who comes from nowhere to achieve everything (wealth, social status, glamour) that America promises its citizens but is obliged eventually to recognize the hollowness at the heart of the promise. No book has ever caught more perfectly and precisely the power of the American Dream and the pain of the disillusionment that follows the realization that it is ultimately unattainable.

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