format

Four standard audio CDs:

One MP3 CD 

Download from my server in Denver, Colorado:

52 MP3 files
at 80 Kbps

Downloaded as 2 zip files
80 Mb + 90 Mb

After your purchase, I will email you a password and a link to download these two files.  Please be aware they are LARGE files, and may take some time to download, depending on the speed of your internet connection

From time to time, I also offer copies of The Great Gatsby for auction on eBay Australia and on Oztion.

By bidding in an auction, you may save several dollars on the prices above.
My auction prices (for the standard audio 4-CD version)
start at $AUD15.95 on eBay Australia, and $AUD15.45 on Oztion.

 LISTEN!
I have condensed four brief passages of the novel into 80 kbps MP3 format for sampling....

Tom meets his girl at Wilson's garage - CLICK TO LISTEN

1 min 58 secs (1.12 Mb)

Lunch with Gatsby and Wolfsheim - CLICK TO LISTEN

2 mins 08 secs (1.22 Mb)

Tom and Daisy at Gatsby's party - CLICK TO LISTEN

1 min 40 secs (985 Kb)

Nick stays late to chat with Gatsby - CLICK TO LISTEN

1 mins 59 secs (1.13 Mb)

Millions of people already know the story; either from reading the original novel, or from one of three movie versions:

The 1949 version  – starring Alan Ladd and Betty Field

The 1974 version  – starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow
Tagline: Gone is the romance that was so divine.

The 2000 (made for TV) versionstarring Toby Stephens and Mira Sorvino
Tagline: He risked it all to give first love a second chance.

However, none of the movie versions capture the depth of the characters in F. Scott’s Fitzgerald’s novel. If you don’t know it, The Great Gatsby is a story of one mysterious man’s attempt to recapture the glow of a first passionate love.

Set in the summer of 1922, in the heady atmosphere of "Jazz Age" New York and Long Island, The Great Gatsby weaves a compelling love story through sub-plots of uncertainty about Jay Gatsby’s identity and the rumoured sources of his wealth.

Is Jay Gatsby a hero, or a villain?

The story is told through the eyes of Gatsby’s young neighbour, Nick Carraway, who is tempted by the riches and of the lavish parties at Gatsby’s waterfront mansion.  Nick wavers between contempt for Gatsby’s dubious lifestyle, and sympathy for Gatsby’s unswerving devotion to the unattainable Daisy.

Despite his doubts, Nick is drawn into the final stage of Gatsby’s plot to woo Daisy back from her philandering husband Tom.

As the mists of confusion are swept away in Gatsby’s confrontation with Tom, the main characters make choices that lead to unforeseeable, tragic results.

About the author

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in 1896 to an upper-middle class Roman Catholic family. Fitzgerald spent his childhood partly in St Paul, and partly in Buffalo, New York. He attended Princeton University from 1913, dropping out to enlist in the US Army in 1917. However, World War I ended before he was due to be shipped to Europe.

His life-long sweetheart, Zelda Sayre, agreed to marry him after his first novel, This Side of Paradise, was published in 1920. The Great Gatsby is considered his masterpiece.

Although Fitzgerald's passion lay in writing novels, they never sold well enough to support the opulent lifestyle that he and Zelda adopted as New York celebrities. To supplement his income, he also wrote short stories for magazines. He was constantly in financial trouble and often required loans from his associates. He spent the second half of the 1930s in Hollywood, working on short stories, scripts for MGM, and his fifth novel, which he did not complete.

Fitzgerald became notorious during the 1920s for his extraordinarily heavy drinking, which, together with his smoking habit, eventually affected his health. He died on 21 December, 1940.

The greatest novel of the 20th Century?

The Great Gatsby is so well regarded that it is a standard text
in high school and university courses on American literature
around the world

• In 1998, Radcliffe Publishing ranked The Great Gatsby No. 1 in the "100 best novels of the 20th century" (yes, the very best!)

• In 2003, the Random House Modern Library compiled two lists of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. The Great Gatsby ranked No. 2 on the Editorial Board’s list, and No. 13 on the Reader’s List.

• In 2005, Time magazine ranked it among the 100 greatest English-language novels.

• In 2003, The Great Gatsby ranked No. 43 among 100 best-loved novels by listeners/viewers of the BBC’s 2003 “The Big Read”

• Featured as a "landmark of modern literature" among the New York Public Library’s “Books of the Century”

• Ranked No. 48 in The Observer (UK) list of the 100 greatest novels of all time.