F·S·菲茨傑拉德（Francis Scott Fitzgerald，1896—1940）

二十世紀美國最傑齣的作傢之一，以詩人和夢想傢的氣質為“爵士時代”吟唱華麗挽歌。短短四十四年的人生，他的遭際幾經跌宕起伏，在名利場中看盡世態炎涼。二十世紀末，美國學術界權威在百年英語長河中選齣一百部最優秀的小說，凝聚瞭菲茨傑拉德纔華橫溢的兩部長篇小說《瞭不起的蓋茨比》和《夜色溫柔》均榜上有名，前者更高居第二位。

Published in 1934, Tender Is the Night was one of the most talked-about books of the year. "It's amazing how excellent much of it is," Ernest Hemingway said to Maxwell Perkins. "I will say now," John O'Hara wrote Fitzgerald, "Tender Is the Night is in the early stages of being my favorite book, even more than This Side of Paradise." And Archibald MacLeish exclaimed: "Great God, Scott...You are a fine writer. Believe it -- not me." Set on the French Riviera in the late 1920s, Tender Is the Night is the tragic romance of the young actress Rosemary Hoyt and the stylish American couple Dick and Nicole Diver. A brilliant young psychiatrist at the time of his marriage, Dick is both husband and doctor to Nicole, whose wealth goads him into a lifestyle not his own, and whose growing strength highlights Dick's harrowing demise. A profound study of the romantic concept of character -- lyrical, expansive, and hauntingly evocative -- Tender Is the Night, Mabel Dodge Luhan remarked, raised F. Scott Fitzgerald to the heights of "a modern Orpheus."