The Great Gatsby

Nick Carraway rents a small house on Long Island next to a mansion where the parties never stop, thrown by a host almost nobody has actually met. Jay Gatsby's champagne, his shirts, his rumored past, all of it, Nick slowly learns, is aimed like an arrow at a single green light across the bay: Daisy Buchanan, the girl Gatsby loved five years ago and intends, against all sense, to win back exactly as things were.

Fitzgerald packs the glitter and rot of the Jazz Age into barely fifty thousand words (every sentence polished, every image doing double work) before the summer curdles into betrayal and violence. At around five and a half hours, it is one of the great one-sitting listens: an entire American myth between one commute and the next.

At roughly 51,100 words, The Great Gatsby runs about 5½ hours at 1x narration speed. That figure is an estimate based on a typical narration pace. The exact length depends on the voice and the playback speed you choose.

The Great Gatsby is in the public domain, so the complete text is free on Project Gutenberg and LoudReader has the entire Project Gutenberg catalog built in. To listen:

1. Download LoudReader for Mac or iPhone (free, no account).
2. Search for “The Great Gatsby” in the built-in catalog and add it to your library.
3. Press play. A natural offline voice reads the book while each word highlights on screen, and your place is saved between sessions.

LoudReader reads with natural offline voices, so the whole book works on a plane or underground. It is fully on-device and private, your library never leaves your device. Listening is unlimited on the free tier.