"The Great Gatsby" 

"The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald, first published in 1925, is one of the most celebrated novels in American literature. Set during the Roaring Twenties—an era of dramatic social and political change—the novel is renowned for its sharp critique of the American Dream and provides a critical examination of the American upper classes.

The story is narrated by Nick Carraway, a young man from Minnesota who moves to New York in the summer of 1922 to learn about the bond business. He rents a house in the West Egg district of Long Island, a wealthy but unfashionable area populated by the new rich, a group who have made their fortunes too recently to have established social connections. Nick's next-door neighbor in West Egg is a mysterious man named Jay Gatsby, who lives in a gigantic Gothic mansion and throws extravagant parties every Saturday night.

Nick eventually learns that Gatsby is deeply in love with his cousin, Daisy Buchanan, who lives across the bay in the more fashionable East Egg. Daisy is married to Tom Buchanan, a man of old money who matches his affluence with arrogance and infidelity. Gatsby's obsession with Daisy, whom he loved and lost before going off to fight in World War I, is the driving force behind his acquisition of immense wealth and his compulsion to give lavish parties in the hopes that she might walk into one of them.

Through a series of tragic events, Fitzgerald exposes the hollowness of the upper class and the superficiality of the American Dream. Gatsby's dream is revealed to be based on an illusion: that acquiring wealth and status could allow him to recapture a past love and fulfill his idealized vision of self and life.

"The Great Gatsby" is praised for its vivid depiction of the Jazz Age—a term Fitzgerald himself coined—and its piercing exploration of themes such as decadence, idealism, resistance to change, social upheaval, and excess. The novel's crisp prose, complex characters, and enduring themes offer a poignant commentary on the American psyche, making it a timeless reflection on the pursuit of happiness and the American experience.