Great Gatsby Prequel to Publish Next Year

A prequel to The Great Gatsby, Nick, will be available for purchase in February 2021, the year that marks the 125th anniversary of Fitzgerald’s birth.

The prequel tells the story of Nick Carraway, narrator of The Great Gatsby, of his early life up of to the meeting of Gatsby. Nick’s story will see him in the trenches of Worls War One, and will follow him to his redemptive journey from a whirlwind Paris romance, back to New Orleans.

Author Michael Ferris Smith commented “I’ve always been drawn to Nick Carraway as a character, his feelings on turning 30 and a decade of uncertainty before him have always rung true to my own emotions when I was the same age. And I still feel that way much of the time, torn between the revelations of what we discover in life and the abandon of those same discoveries. “The last time I read Gatsby, a few years ago, Nick stayed in my imagination, and he reveals so little about himself in the story, I couldn’t help but begin to create him in my mind, and I knew the only way to get it out was to put it on the page. So I embraced the idea and dove into it with all those emotions fuelling the creation.”

A spokesman from British publisher No Exit Press stated to The Bookseller : “In Nick, Michael has created an exceptional story: an inspired concept realised with delicate, rhythmic prose, profound characterisation and deep emotion. The trenches and the bomb craters are utterly vivid, the silence of the tunnels deafening. And the ending — the clever ending that brought Nick’s story to a close while opening up the world of West Egg — is perfect. Nick is a brilliant novel that will enhance Michael’s considerable international reputation.”

It’s certainly exciting! Nick is available for pre-order now on the link below or at your local independent bookshop and will be released on 25th February 2012.