The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with Jay Gatsby, the mysterious millionaire with an obsession to reunite with Daisy Buchanan, a wealthy young woman whom he loved in his youth.
The work is considered the author’s magnum opus, exploring themes of decadence, idealism, social stigmas, patriarchal norms, and the deleterious effects of unencumbered wealth in capitalistic society, set against the backdrop of the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties. At its heart, it’s a cautionary tale, a revealing look into the darker side to the American Dream.
Commercially unsuccessful when it was first published, The Great Gatsby—which was Fitzgerald’s third novel—is now considered a classic of American fiction and has often been called the Great American Novel.