https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/05/top-10-tales-about-the-rich-sarah-blake

From Scott Fitzgerald’s glamour to Edith Wharton’s high-society intrigue, the best of these seductive stories reveal uncomfortable secrets

Fictions about the rich are a sneaky bunch. While uncovering the machinery of a fantasy, they also indulge the longing for an invitation to the party. Characters often stand out for their enormous wealth and property, and for the silence and lies that bind them to that exalted status.

In the US, for example, the word slavery – the institution that created so much of the nation’s wealth – does not appear anywhere in our constitution, and our fictions dramatise that silence over and over again, showing the strongholds of property and power that defend boundaries of class, colour and bloodline.