Publisher's Synopsis
"It was always the becoming he dreamed of, never the being."
First published in 1920, F. Scott Fitzgerald's debut novel 'This Side of Paradise' was a sizzling sensation that put the young American author on the map. Its initial printing of 3,000 copies sold out in three days.
The novel's hero is Amory Blaine, a handsome, wealthy, spoiled and snobbish young man from the Mid West who attends Princeton University where he searches in vain for meaning in the dissolute lives of the young rich elite. Lacking all sense of purpose, he begins a series of flirtations that culminate in a genuine but ill-fated love for a young woman who rejects him to marry a wealthier man.
During the war, Amory serves as an officer in France, and upon his return home he embarks upon a career in advertising, world-weary, cynical, regretful, and not yet thirty years old ...
Virtually a record of the 'Lost Generation' in its college days, the novel treats Fitzgerald's characteristic theme of true love blighted by money lust and is remarkable for its honest and detailed descriptions of the early Jazz Age.
