Nelson Algren - A Walk on the Wild Side

That was all long ago in some brief lost spring, in a place that is no more. In that hour that frogs begin and the scent off the mesquite comes strongest.

‘Nelson Algren may be the funniest man around. Which is another way of saying that he may be the most serious… As with all good poets, the guy is a prophet.’

‘A book that at root, proves America has always been a third world country.’

‘Awesome … one of the original urban jungle anthropologists to come back with reports of another America.’

‘Algren is an artist whose sympathy is as large as Victor Hugo’s, an artist who ranks, with this novel, among our best American authors.’

‘The finest American novel published since the war.’

‘Looks back to Dickens and forward to Hubert Selby Jr and Irvine Welsh.’

‘This is a man writing and you should not read it if you cannot take a punch… Mr Algren can hit with both hands and move around and he will kill you if you are not awfully careful… Mr Algren, boy, you are good.’

NELSON ALGREN was born in 1909 in Detroit and lived mostly in Chicago. He was the author of five novels, including A Walk on the Wild Side (which inspired the Lou Reed song of the same name), Somebody in Boots and Never Come Morning . He was also a prolific writer of short stories, essays, travelogues and poems. In 1950 The Man with the Golden Arm earned him the first American National Book Award.

His life was a succession of gambling problems, disastrous marriages and wild extremes – ranging from Texas prisons and skid-row soup-kitchens to Hollywood parties and literary celebrations. He also had a passionate love affair with French feminist Simone de Beauvoir.

Algren died in 1981, shortly after being appointed as a fellow of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

RICHARD FLANAGAN’s novels Death of a River Guide, The Sound of One Hand Clapping and Gould’s Book of Fish have been published to acclaim in 24 countries. He lives in Tasmania.

Somebody in Boots

Never Come Morning

The Neon Wilderness

The Man with the Golden Arm

Chicago: City on the Make

A Walk on the Wild Side

Who Lost an American

Notes from a Sea Diary:

Hemingway All the Way

The Devil’s Stocking

The Last Carousel

This edition first published in Great Britain in 1999 by Rebel Inc, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd,

14 High Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1TE

This digital edition first published by Canongate in 2009

Copyright © 1956, renewed 1984 by the estate of Nelson Algren

Introduction copyright © 2005 by Richard Flanagan

All rights reserved

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 84767 649 8

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