The Last Tycoon is a sophisticated, gripping tale of love and intrigue in the Golden Age of Hollywood, containing what many critics have claimed are Fitzgerald's most modern and engaging characters.
Baz Luhrmann's film adaptation of The Great Gatsby, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, opened the 66th Cannes Film Festival.
A 'Piece of Passion' from Alessandro Gallenzi on the Alma Classics editions... 'F. Scott Fitzgerald has been long a favourite of mine. Since I discovered The Great Gatsby at university, I have been avidly reading all of his work. I am particularly fond of some of his short stories, from ‘The Rich Boy’ (in All the Sad Young Men) to ‘The Diamond as Big as the Ritz’ and ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ (in Tales of the Jazz Age).
I have poured all my passion and love for Fitzgerald’s work into these stylish editions, with front-cover illustrations by Art-Deco genius Georges Barbier, flaps, pictures and a wealth of extra material. These books are a publisher’s and a fan’s tribute to one of the greatest masters of world literature.'
A mesmerising and lavish story of Hollywood's Golden Age from the author of The Great Gatsby.
1930s Hollywood. The depression has receded, the studios are booming, and the glitz and glamour are bewitching. But for Cecilia Brady, this is just life. That is, until she meets Monroe Stahr...
Stahr is at the centre of it all. A genius production chief in the Golden Age of Hollywood. Cecilia is mesmerised. But Stahr's attentions are caught elsewhere - in the arms of a mysterious woman - and Cecilia watches as a passionate but doomed love affair unfolds.
Little by little, Stahr loses his grasp on this fickle world. Fighting with his writers and declaring war on the Union bosses, he is saved from tragedy only by Fitzgerald's own death.
Although THE LAST TYCOON will forever remain unfinished, it is a work of unrivalled potential, exposing a Hollywood we no longer know. One of stars in ascension, and the great picture men in free fall.
F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in 1896 in St Paul, Minnesota, and went to Princeton University which he left in 1917 to join the army. Fitzgerald was said to have epitomised the Jazz Age, an age inhabited by a generation he defined as ‘grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken’.
In 1920 he married Zelda Sayre. Their destructive relationship and her subsequent mental breakdowns became a major influence on his writing. Among his publications were five novels, This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby, The Beautiful and Damned, Tender is the Night and The Love of the Last Tycoon (his last and unfinished work): six volumes of short stories and The Crack-Up, a selection of autobiographical pieces.
Fitzgerald died suddenly in 1940. After his death The New York Times said of him that ‘He was better than he knew, for in fact and in the literary sense he invented a “generation” … he might have interpreted them and even guided them, as in their middle years they saw a different and nobler freedom threatened with destruction.’
