Tender is the Night

On the beaches of the 1920s French Riviera, Dick Diver, a brilliant young psychiatrist, and his wife, Nicole, preside over a circle of wealthy American expatriates. To their guests, their days are a careful routine of Mediterranean sun and private dinner parties. But behind closed doors, their marriage is disintegrating under the weight of mental illness and Dick's steady moral deterioration.

What began in a Swiss clinic as a doctor's attempt to heal a patient has become a trap of dependency and decadence. As the Jazz Age accelerates around them, the couple trades their early promise for jealousy and betrayal, slowly reversing their rigid roles as caregiver and patient.

Published in 1934, this was Fitzgerald’s fourth novel and the book he considered his finest work. Built from his own years in Europe and his wife's psychiatric treatment, it operates as a strict autopsy of the Lost Generation and its collapse.