The Great Gatsby
Contributors: Tony Tanner (Introduction)
Series: Penguin Modern Classics
Publisher: Penguin Books; Gardners Books
Published: 2000 February 24
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 240
ISBN-13: 9780141182636
Description: Day and Night Jay Gatsby's mansion on West Egg buzzes with bright young things drinking, dancing and debating his mysterious character. For Gatsby - young, handsome, fabulously rich - always seems alone in the crowd, watching and waiting, although no one knows what for. Beneath the shimmering surface of his life he is hiding a secret longing that can never be fulfilled.

In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald brilliantly captures both the disillusion of post-war America and the moral failure of a society obsessed with wealth and status. But he does more than render the essence of a particular time and place, for in chronicling Gatsby's tragic pursuit of his dream, Fitzgerald re-creates the universal conflict between illusion and reality.
(back cover)