In 1922, F Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write "something new--something extraordinary and beautiful and simple, intricately patterned". That extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned and, above all, simple novel became The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgerald's finest work and certainly the book for which he is best known. A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Gatsby captured the spirit of the author's generation and earned itself a permanent place in American mythology. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald's--and his country's--most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed and the promise of new beginnings. "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther... And one fine morning--" Gatsby's rise to glory and eventual fall from grace be comes a kind of cautionary tale about the American Dream.

It's also a love story, of sorts, the narrative of Gatsby's quixotic passion for Daisy Buchanan. The pair meet five years before the novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby an impoverished officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries the brutal, bullying but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means--and to the pursuit of Daisy, which amounts to the same thing. "Her voice is full of money," Gatsby says admiringly, in one of the novel's more famous descriptions. His millions made, Gatsby buys a mansion across Long Island Sound from Daisy's patrician East Egg address, throws lavish parties and waits for her to appear. When s he does, events unfold with all the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama, with detached, cynical neighbour Nick Carraway acting as chorus throughout. Spare, elegantly plotted and written in crystalline prose, The Great Gatsby is as perfectly satisfying as the best kind of poem. Perry Freeman, Amazon.com

《瞭不起的蓋茨比》(名著名譯插圖本)弗·司各特·菲茨傑拉德（1896-1940），美國二十世紀最傑齣的作傢之一。《瞭不起的蓋茨比》是他最著名的代錶作。二十世紀二十年代的美國，空氣裏彌漫著歡歌與縱飲的氣息。一個偶然的機會，窮職員尼剋闖入瞭揮金如土的大富翁蓋茨比隱秘的世界，驚訝地發現，他內心惟一的牽絆竟是對河岸那盞小小的綠燈——燈影婆娑中，住著心愛的黛西。然而，冰冷的現實容不下縹緲的夢，到頭來，蓋茨比心中的女神隻不過是凡塵俗世的物質女郎。當一切真相大白，蓋茨比的悲劇人生亦如煙花般，璀璨隻是一瞬，幻滅纔是永恒。一闋華麗的“爵士時代”的挽歌，在菲茨傑拉德筆下，如詩如夢，在美國當代文學史上留下瞭墨色濃重的印痕。