The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

This short story imagines a man born in Baltimore with the body and mind of a seventy-year-old, who grows younger as the years pass. His bewildered father, his family and the town must deal with the strange child, while Benjamin himself tries to find a place in school, business, marriage and society as his age runs backward against everyone else's.

Part fantasy and part gentle satire, the tale plays with ideas of age, convention and the passing of time. It was first published in a magazine in 1922 and later collected in Tales of the Jazz Age.