Who Can Fall in Love After Thirty?

Spouses Francis Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald are the “golden couple” of the Jazz Age— embodiment of the “Lost Generation,” flesh and blood of that legendary era. They were constant figures in society chronicles and loud scandals. It is commonly believed that the one with talent, “natural as a pattern of pollen on a butterfly’s wings” (as Hemingway put it), wrote his masterpieces, while Zelda at the same time tried to become a star in Diaghilev’s ballet. That he earned a fortune after a fortune—yet all the money went to fund her in expensive psychiatric clinics. And that the story of their dramatic relationship became the basis for his famous book “Tender Is the Night.”

In reality, Zelda got there first: her innovative novel “Save Me a Waltz,” based on the same autobiographical material, was published two years earlier—much to her husband’s displeasure. And a few decades later, rumors spread that in his works her husband had not hesitated to use her diaries and notebooks—word for word.

Presented here are stories and essays published in Russian for the first time. In the original, most of the stories were initially printed under the name of both spouses or under F. S. Fitzgerald’s authorship—but they were written by Zelda.