Showing results for "Paradiso" in City Life

Set in post- World War I America, Fitzgerald’s dazzling debut novel follows the life of Amory Blaine, a charming but self-absorbed Princeton student. As Amory drifts in and out of love affairs, experiences intellectual awakenings and navigates heartbreak, he becomes increasingly desperate to uncover a sense of identity and meaning. Fitzgerald captivatingly reproduces the restless spirit of the Jazz Age with lyrical prose and a profound existential yearning.

This Side of Paradise is a 1920 debut novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. It examines the lives and morality of carefree American youth at the dawn of the Jazz Age. Its protagonist, Amory Blaine, is a handsome middle-class student at Princeton University who dabbles in literature and engages in a series of unfulfilling romances with young women. The novel explores themes of love warped by greed and social ambition.

It’s 2022 and Helen is starting again. Newly single, dogged by grief, adrift in a hostile rental market, she finds a four-bedroom house flanked by apartment blocks that stare into the yard. Despite the lack of privacy, she fills its rooms with an unlikely group of residents looking for communal belonging: zine maker, activist, disaffected artist, part-time rugby league player – each looking to build a future, each haunted by their recent past. But if a rented house in Sydney could ever promise salvation, it would come with a coating of black mould.

First published in 1920, This Side of Paradise proved to be a best-selling novel in Fitzgerald’s own lifetime. The book follows the early life and education of Amory Blaine and is, in fact, a thinly disguised account of Fitzgerald’s own experience as an undergraduate at Princeton and as an aspiring writer. Brilliantly original in its experimental narrative, it comprises a series of contrasting styles and structures.

The debut novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the book examines the lives and morality of American youth in the aftermath of World War I. The novel explores the theme of love warped by greed and status seeking.