Tender is the Night - by F Scott Fitzgerald Paperback

About the Book

First published in 1934, Fitzgerald's classic story of psychological disintegration was denounced by many as an unflattering portrayal of Sara and Gerald Murphy (in the guise of characters Dick and Nicole Driver), who had been generous hosts to many expatriates. Only after Fitzgerald's death was Tender Is the Night recognized as a powerful and moving depiction of the human frailties that affect privileged and ordinary people alike.

Book Synopsis

The marriage between a respected doctor and his bewitching, wealthy, and dangerously unstable patient slowly collapses under the weight of obsession, vanity, and existential malaise in this modern classic by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Set in the south of France in the late 1920s, Tender Is the Night is the tragic tale of a young actress, Rosemary Hoyt, and her complicated relationship with the alluring American couple Dick and Nicole Diver. A brilliant psychiatrist at the time of his marriage, Dick is both husband and doctor to Nicole, whose wealth pushed him into a glamorous lifestyle, and whose growing strength highlights Dick's decline.

Lyrical, expansive, and hauntingly evocative, Tender Is the Night was one of the most talked about books of the year when it was originally published in 1934 and is even more beloved by readers today for its examination of beauty and decay.

Review Quotes

"I will say now, Tender Is the Night is in the early stages of being my favorite book, even more than This Side of Paradise."
--John O'Hara

"It's amazing how excellent much of it is."
--Ernest Hemingway

About the Author

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1896. He attended Princeton University, joined the United States Army during World War I, and published his first novel, This Side of Paradise, in 1920. That same year he married Zelda Sayre and for the next decade the couple lived in New York, Paris, and on the Riviera. Fitzgerald's novels include The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, and Tender Is the Night. He died at the age of forty-four while working on The Last Tycoon. Fitzgerald's fiction has secured his reputation as one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century.