Waltz Leave for Me

The spouses Francis Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald - the "golden couple" of the jazz age, the embodiment of the "lost generation," flesh and blood of that legendary epoch, constant heroes of social chronicles and loud scandals. It is commonly believed... that the talented one, "natural as the pattern of pollen on a butterfly's wings" (in Hemingway's words), wrote his masterpieces while Zelda attempted to become a star of the Diaghilev ballet; that he earned fortune after fortune - but all the money went to her maintenance in expensive psychiatric clinics; and that the story of their dramatic relationship became the basis for his famous book "Tender Is the Night." However, in reality, Zelda managed to publish her groundbreaking novel "Waltz Leave for Me," based on the same autobiographical material, two years earlier, much to her husband's displeasure. And decades later, there were conversations that her husband did not hesitate to use her diaries and notebooks in his works, often verbatim. In any case, "Waltz Leave for Me," with its story of American coming-of-age and the European trials of the whimsical beauty Alabama Knight and her artist-husband, remains an astonishing document of a brilliant era.
The complete collection of lifetime publications by Zelda Fitzgerald is presented for your attention - a novel, stories, essays - with the novel published in a new translation, while the other materials are appearing in Russian for the first time. Originally, most of the stories were published under the names of both spouses or attributed to F. Scott Fitzgerald - but written by Zelda.