The Great Gatsby is a dazzling social satire F Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece & a milestone in twentieth-century literature now beautifully repackaged as part of the Penguin Essentials range' There was music from my neighbour's house through the summer nights In his blue gardens men & girls came & went like moths among the whisperings & the champagne & the stars' Everybody who is anybody is seen at the glittering parties held in millionaire Jay Gatsby's mansion in West Egg east of New York The riotous throng congregates in his sumptuous garden coolly debating Gatsby's origins & mysterious past None of the frivolous socialites understands him & among various rumours is the conviction that 'he killed a man' A detached onlooker Gatsby is oblivious to the speculation he creates but always seems to be watching & waiting though no one knows what for As the tragic story unfolds Gatsby's destructive dreams & passions are revealed leading to disturbing consequences A brilliant evocation of 1920s high society The Great Gatsby peels away the layers of this glamorous world to display the coldness & cruelty at its heart' Not only a page-turner & a heartbreaker it's one of the most quintessentially American novels ever written' Time' He (F Scott Fitzgerald) was better than he knew for in fact & in the literary sense he invented a generation' New York Times' The most perfectly crafted work of fiction to have come out of America' Professor Tony Tanner' The American masterwork the finest work of fiction by any of this country's writers' Washington Post