F. Scott Fitzgerald

Francis Scott Fitzgerald wrote "The Great Gatsby" and died believing himself a failure. The novel sold twenty thousand copies — mediocre. Now it is read in every American school.

He was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1896. Princeton; the First World War — he never reached the front. Zelda — his love and his curse. "This Side of Paradise" (1920) made him famous.

"The Great Gatsby" (1925): a self-invented millionaire, the green light on the far shore, the American Dream as a trap. "Tender Is the Night" — the disintegration of a marriage among rich Americans in Europe.

Zelda went mad. Fitzgerald drank and wrote screenplays in Hollywood. He died in 1940 of a heart attack. "Gatsby" became a classic after his death.