A Walk on the Wild Side

Nelson Algren was the recipient of the first National Rook Award, for The Man with the Golden Arm, but few could have guessed that a masterwork of American Literature still lay before him. With its depictions of the downtrodden prostitutes, bootleggers, and hustlers of Perdido Street in the Old French Quarter of l93Os New Orleans, A Walk on the Wild Side found a place in the imaginations of generations to follow.

In Algren's words: "This is a story that tries to tell something about the natural toughness of women and men, in that order . . . The book asks why lost people sometimes develop into greater human beings than those who have never been lost in their whole lives. Why men who nave suffered at the hands of other men are the natural believers in humanity, while those whose part has been simply to acquire, to take all and give nothing, are the most contemptuous of mankind. Why the laughter of old survivors rings more true than those whose Laughs have to be bought".