In a Swiss sanatorium, a brilliant psychiatrist encounters a rich young patient whose problems exert a seductive fascination.
After their marriage, they live on the French Riviera. There, set against the sun-baked stone houses and the drama of the sea, Dick and Nicole Diver's glamour and wealth suggest a fabled existence - the charmed lives of the seriously and breathtakingly frivolous. But, as with all confidence tricks, luck can run out.
It is to the theme of money, its corruption and destructive power, that F.Scott Fitzgerald returns in this, his most tantalizing and ambitious novel. The story of Dick and Nicole's disintegrating marriage and spoilt promise reflects Fitzgerald's own dive into drink and despair - and, of course, the insanity that so cruelly dogged his wife Zelda.