Fitzgerald F.: This Side of Paradise

Considered scandalous (and brilliant) when it was published in 1920, This Side of Paradise describes the intellectual, spiritual, and sexual education of young Amory Blaine in the tumultuous America of the early twentieth century. Highly sophisticated yet hopelessly romantic, Amory flounders from prep school to Princeton to glittering Jazz Age New York, confident that he is destined for greatness but unsure how to go about it.  Fitzgerald’s razor-sharp re-creation of a defiant, disillusioned generation “grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken” makes This Side of Paradisea timeless autobiographical novel of youth and alienation. It moves from tenderness to cynicism to hope with the grace and power that make Fitzgerald one of the greatest of American writers.