This Side of Paradise

This Side of Paradise is the debut novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in 1920. The book examines the lives and morality of carefree American youth at the dawn of the Jazz Age. Its protagonist Amory Blaine is an attractive middle-class student at Princeton University who dabbles in literature and engages in a series of romances with flappers. The novel explores the theme of love warped by greed and status seeking, and takes its title from a line of Rupert Brooke`s poem Tiare Tahiti.

Within months of its publication, This Side of Paradise became a cultural sensation in the United States, and reviewers hailed the work as the best novel of the decade. The novel became especially popular among college students, and the national press depicted its boyish author as the standard-bearer for "youth in revolt". Overnight, the novel`s author F. Scott Fitzgerald became a household name. Fitzgerald`s newfound fame enabled him to earn much higher rates for his short stories, and his increased financial prospects persuaded his reluctant fiancée Zelda Sayre to marry him.