Tender is the Night

　　「他常想著要做個好人，要慈善、要勇敢、要睿智，不過這一切都相當困難。如果有機會的話，他也希望為人所愛。」

　　年輕貌美、正在影 壇崛起的蘿絲瑪麗來到南法度假，結識了如神仙眷侶一般、魅力無窮的戴佛夫婦，並一見鍾情愛上了風度翩翩的迪克‧戴佛。不過這對夫妻表面光鮮亮麗，背後卻有 難言之隱。迪克原是才華出眾、前程似錦的精神科醫師，卻愛上富家女病患妮可，抱著感情與憐憫娶了她，過起浮華閒散、相互依賴的生活。妮可不穩定的精神狀態 讓迪克耗盡心神，蘿絲瑪麗的出現讓糾纏不清的情結更添複雜。時光荏苒，逐漸染上酒癮的迪克這才發覺，救贖與沉淪只有一線之隔，而一輩子的苦心到了最後卻什 麼也留不下，只有夜色依舊溫柔。

　　《夜未央》是費茲傑羅完成的最後一部長篇小說，在妻子進出精神病院、個人酗酒問題纏身、債台日漸高築 的八年間，嘔心瀝血著就。既是最貼近作者個人生命的告白之作，也是最具野心的微觀史詩。與璀璨耀眼如星光的《大亨小傳》相較，此書就有如廣闊黝暗的夜空， 複雜的人物與敘事或許令人茫然，但細細體會可發覺其中包含著無限溫柔的胸懷，因此將永遠與《大亨小傳》並列為費茲傑羅的傳世之作。

　　本書中譯本<<夜未央>>由一人出版社出版

　　Set in the South of France in the decade after the First World War, Tender is the Night explores the new world of moneyed leisure found by the first generation of idle-rich Americans to take refuge in the French Riviera, bracketed between the horrors of the Great War and the Great Depression to come. It is the story of a brilliant and magnetic psychiatrist named Dick Diver; the bewitching, wealthy, and dangerously unstable mental patient, Nicole, who becomes his wife; and the beautiful, harrowing ten-year pas de deux they act out along the border between sanity and madness.

　　F. Scott Fitzgerald deliberately set out to write the most ambitious and far-reaching novel of his career, experimenting radically with narrative conventions of chronology and point of view and drawing on early breakthroughs in psychiatry to enrich his account of the makeup and breakdown of character and culture.

　　This stunning Macmillan Collector's Library edition of Tender is the Night features an afterword by Ned Halley.

史考特‧費茲傑羅
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (1896–1940)

　 　費茲傑羅是不是美國最偉大的作家或許猶可爭論，但說他是最貼近「美國夢」本質的作家應無疑義。從一鳴驚人、揮霍度日到聲勢日下、精神與家庭崩解，從輝煌 燦爛到沉淪黯淡，最後抱著未完成的遺稿與榮光再現的夢想猝逝，他的一生正映現了二十世紀初美國的發展及脆弱如浮世泡影的美國夢。沒有人比他更擅於以華麗的 修辭來描繪浮華的空洞與夢想的虛幻，以及個人在其中的掙扎。其中《大亨小傳》也許是最能體現他技巧與風格、最精煉無瑕的傑作，而《夜未央》卻是最貼近他生 命的告白之作，真誠訴說著終將失去的一切，以及洞悉這點卻仍堅持作夢的勇氣與溫柔。就算經歷了多少折磨與幻滅，浪漫的費茲傑羅始終沒有放棄對文學、對人世 的愛，而也正是這種無悔的愛讓費茲傑羅的作品百年來能不斷打動無數人心、屹立不搖於經典之列。

　　F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) was born into a well-to-do Catholic family living in St Paul, Minnesota. At Princeton University he decided to become a writer, leaving without graduating in 1917 to join the army when America entered the First World War. Believing he would be killed at the front, he hurriedly wrote the novel that would become This Side of Paradise, but in the end was not sent to Europe. The novel was published in 1920 to great critical acclaim. He married Zelda Sayre a week after the publication and they embarked on an extravagant lifestyle in New York. Their marriage was blighted by alcoholism, mental illness and financial strife, and provided much material for Scott's numerous short stories and subsequent novels - The Beautiful and Damned (1922), The Great Gatsby (1925) and Tender is the Night (1934). Fitzgerald died aged forty-four, and is regarded as one of America's greatest and most influential writers.