The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

No one ever rightly knew who Gatsby was. Some said that he had been a German spy, elhers that he was related to one of Europe's royal families.

Despite this nearly everyone took advantage of his fabulous hospitality. And it really was fabulous. In his superb Long Island home he gave the most amazing parties, and not the least remarkable thing about them was the fact that few people could recognize their host.

He seemed to be a person without background, without history, without a home. Yet the irony of this bright and brittle facade was that he had created it not to impress the world, but to impress just one persona girl he had loved and had had to leave, a girl who had loved him but was now married to a rich good-for-nothing, a girl whom he had dreamed about for over four years.

This dream had long ceased to have any substance or any connexion with reality and for that reason he could not wake from it. He had doped himself with his own illusion. And only death could dispel that dream.