Set in the South of France in the decade after World War I, Tender Is the Night is the story of a brilliant and magnetic psychiatrist named Dick Diver who marries one of his patients, a wealthy schizophrenic, Nicole Warren; as she slowly recovers, she exhausts his vitality until he is, in Fitzgeralds words, un homme épuisé (a used-up man). The novel explores how love can be won, lost, and perverted by the myriad forces that shape our lives, including money, illness, and politics.