Which Fitzgerald short story features a giant diamond?

The Fitzgerald short story featuring a giant diamond is “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz.” Fitzgerald’s fantastical tale follows John T. Unger, a student from the Mississippi town of Hades, who visits his wealthy classmate Percy Washington in a remote Montana valley.

Percy’s father, Braddock Washington, controls a mountain made entirely of diamond, making him fabulously rich. He hides the discovery from the outside world and violently prevents visitors, pilots, and even local workers from revealing the secret. The story uses this impossible fortune to satirize extreme wealth, isolation, exploitation, and the moral corruption of inherited power.

The work first appeared in the June 1922 issue of The Smart Set and was collected the same year in Tales of the Jazz Age. Although commonly called a short story, it is also classified as a novella. Readers sometimes confuse it with Fitzgerald’s better-known stories “Winter Dreams” or “The Rich Boy,” but neither contains the giant-diamond premise.