Frankie Machine, a veteran of the Second World War, returns to Chicago's Northwest side with a morphine habit. Nicknamed the 'kid with the golden arm', Frankie is an aspiring drummer by day and an illicit card-dealer by night. In Molly, an old flame, he sees the chance for redemption, for hard work and success - but the demons that chase Frankie are not quite ready to let go. Nelson Algren's critically acclaimed and enormously powerful novel probes the lives of the displaced and dispossessed of post-war America.
In the Mithila region of North Bihar there is an old tradition of painting the walls of the nuptial chamber. The paintings are an assemblage of symbolic images of the lotus plant, the bamboo grove, fishes, birds and snakes in union, and represent fertility and the proliferation of life.
Dove Findhorn is a naive country boy who busts out of Hicksville, Texas in pursuit of a better life in New Orleans. Amongst the downtrodden prostitutes, bootleggers and hustlers of the old French Quarter, Dove finds only hopelessness, crime and despair. His quest uncovers a harrowing grotesque of the American Dream. A Walk in the Wild Side is an angry, lonely, large-hearted and often funny masterpiece that has captured the imaginations of every generation since its first publication in 1956, and that rendered a world later immortalised in Lou Reed''s classic song.
La novela detalla los problemas y dificultades de un crupier ilícito Frankie Machine, y de los personajes variopintos que le rodean en el Chicago de finales de los años cuarenta. Como veterano de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, Frankie se esfuerza por estabilizar su vida personal, tratando de ganarse la vida y luchando contra una creciente adiccion a la morfina. Mafiosos, camellos, drogadictos, prostitutas, este es el ambiente que rodea a Frankie, en el barrio polaco de Chicago, por lo que va a costarle gran trabajo escapar del mundo en que ha crecido.
