This Side of Paradise

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first novel arrived in 1920 and made him a sensation at twenty-three. It traces Amory Blaine, a bright, self-absorbed young man from a moneyed family, through prep school, Princeton, a string of romances that never quite hold, and the sobering years after the First World War. Amory chases literature, status, and love with equal hunger, only to find each one thinner than he imagined. Fitzgerald drew heavily on his own life, and the book caught the restlessness of a generation raised on wealth and unsure of what it wanted. Its loose mix of prose, poetry, and letters felt new at the time. This free PDF and EPUB edition preserves the debut that launched the Jazz Age’s defining voice.