Geniuses together

Paris in the 1920s drew a generation of American writers who had come abroad to work, drink, argue and reinvent their craft. Humphrey Carpenter follows this circle as a group rather than one author at a time, tracing how its members encouraged, irritated and influenced one another.

The book moves among the familiar figures of the expatriate scene, including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound, and it shows how their friendships and rivalries shaped the work they produced. Carpenter places their lives in the cafés, salons and small presses of postwar Paris, where cheap rents and loose social rules let experiments flourish.

Written for general readers interested in literary history, the book suits anyone curious about the Lost Generation and the creative community that formed around it.