In the film industry there is a habit of remakes, to create films inspired by an older production, with other actors and different degrees of alterations of the original script.
I admit that I have never encountered such a strategy in the field of fiction, fiction and I was curious to find out what a possible literary remake of one of the most famous American novels - The Great Gatsby by F.S. Fitzgerald. The remake signed by Vesna Goldsworthy does not hide the source of inspiration at all, even the title immediately refers to the familiarity of Fitzgerald's novel and the author acknowledges, in turn, in the note at the end of the book how much she owes the story of the American writer.
In the Great Gorsky we no longer place ourselves in the crazy years of the US era of jazz, but in contemporary London, multicultural London, London of extremes, in which those who have millions or those who have nothing feel best. Nikola, a Serbian refugee who landed in the British capital in the 1990s with a useless doctorate in literature but was afraid of the army and the conflict in dismembered Yugoslavia, was in a kind of prolonged adolescence, working as a pretentious bookseller. a luxurious bookstore, but on the verge of bankruptcy he finds himself caught in a London high-class intrigue.
Roman Gorsky, a mysterious Russian billionaire based in London, makes an irrefutable offer to Nikola: the creation of a unique library, with rarities and princeps editions, a library that Nikola will consider the project for a true masterpiece (a kind of counterpart of an imaginative novel), with no price limit.
In charge of such a challenging mission and without financial constraint, Nikola will participate in a lot of auctions, will get rare editions of volumes by Pushkin, Joyce or Proust. On the other hand, the bookseller will be visited by a rich Russian woman, married to a British law graduate, Tom Summerscale, who returned from Moscow, where she amassed a beautiful fortune.
Receiving invitations from both Summerscale and Gorsky, Nikola will discover the deceptive, mysterious, frightening and fascinating character of a world she does not even dare to dream of. Gorsky, a billionaire of imposing elegance, an exponent of the full-cycle generation of Russians (born in poverty in the Dickensian labyrinths of Leningrad, has become a promising and ambitious entrepreneur who manages to amass an impressive fortune, supported by a a prominent figure in Russia's high hierarchy), as time passes, reveals her destructive and consumptive obsession with the woman with whom she has fallen in love forever: Natalia.
Roman and Natalia met in their youth, when she was an Arts student, but she refused her marriage proposal (although her father would have approved the marriage) and Gorsky sought to dedicate his life to the conquest of Natalia who, between In time, she married Tom Summerscale and moved to London.
In fact, the whole project of Gorsky, of the unprecedented library, of the mansion he is building in one of the most expensive districts of London, of the exhibition space dedicated to openings, all the wealth of Gorsky that seems inconceivable to Nikola (and who realizes that in fact the wealth of the Russian, his capital generates wherever he stops a kind of vortex that attracts and transforms whatever he touches) are all means by which the billionaire tries to recreate the world from Natalia's dreams.
Attending opulent parties, enjoying exotic trips to private islands, receiving that inexhaustible flow of money for the refurbishment of the library and the assembly of the library, Nikola will come into contact with the tensions and secrets behind the brilliant life of the Russian high class. The Summerscale-Gorsky rivalry will become more and more transparent, although we do not know what is actually happening and what discussions are taking place at the meetings between Natalia and Gorsky.
But the mystery of the original connection between the two Russians begins to arouse suspicion of the British millionaire, who, in turn, is not shy to adopt behaviors that betray his unbalanced nature. What will be the outcome of this story that preserves the tragic lines of Fitzgerald's novel remains for you to discover.
More than a simple remake with changed scenery and characters projected in a different light, the novel by Vesna Goldsworthy is a tribute to books and literature and a tribute to a collective character, visible in the shadows, the capital of Great Britain.
London conquered by emigrants, London in which unhappiness is a form of ungratefulness, an abuse of hospitality of newcomers, London that has become a version of Eastern foreigners, especially Russians, London deceptive and London dense in huge promises and vain at the same time .
Image Sources:
Vesna Goldsworthy: I started from Gatsby as a Greek dramatist starts from Antigone
YouTube Sources:
The Great Gatsby (2013) Scene: "...I'm Gatsby!
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