This Side of Paradise

Summary

Amory Blaine drifts from a privileged Minnesota childhood through Princeton and a string of doomed romances, chasing an ideal of personal greatness that keeps dissolving into disillusionment. Fitzgerald wrote much of the novel to win back his fiancee Zelda Sayre, fusing autobiography with sharp observation of a restless postwar generation testing old conventions. The book's instant success made the twenty three year old author famous virtually overnight and helped define the voice of the Jazz Age.