Before Gerald and Sara Murphy arrived in Antibes in the early 1920s, fabulously wealthy Europeans spent winters in that corner of the world. With rude confidence, the American couple persuaded the proprietor of the Hôtel du Cap to keep a few rooms open when temperatures were considered unbearable. John Dos Passos, Archibald MacLeish and Gertrude Stein summered there blissfully. As Prohibition swept the United States, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway quickly followed suit. What’s more, Coco Chanel, Pablo Picasso and other European creatives joined their party. Arguably, the experience that the Lost Generation sought on the French Riviera was, in many respects, an imitation of American life. In a certain way, these expatriates never left home.

Please note that this book group meets online.

• Nineteen Nineteen by John Dos Passos (1932)
• Poems, 1924-1933  by Archibald MacLeish (1933)
• Tender is the Night  by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1934)