The Man With The Golden Arm
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
In the shadow of Chicago's ruthless postwar slums, Frankie Machine — a card dealer with a steel nerve and a monkey on his back — fights a losing battle against heroin addiction, a suffocating marriage, and the inescapable pull of the streets. Nelson Algren's The Man with the Golden Arm, winner of the inaugural National Book Award in 1950, is a visceral descent into the underworld of junkies, card sharks, cops, and broken dreamers who populate the neon-lit jungle of Division Street, rendered with the raw, poetic ferocity that defined American urban realism. Algren writes with a jazz-inflected prose rhythm — staccato and lyrical in equal measure — that captures both the dark comedy and crushing tragedy of lives lived on society's margins. The novel argues, with unflinching moral urgency, that poverty and addiction are not character flaws but systemic wounds, making it as politically resonant today as it was upon publication. A landmark of 20th-century American literature, it leaves the reader haunted by a single, searing question: in a city that devours its own, can any man truly be free?
Author: Nelson Algren
Format: Paperback
Genre: Modern fiction
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
In the shadow of Chicago's ruthless postwar slums, Frankie Machine — a card dealer with a steel nerve and a monkey on his back — fights a losing battle against heroin addiction, a suffocating marriage, and the inescapable pull of the streets. Nelson Algren's The Man with the Golden Arm, winner of the inaugural National Book Award in 1950, is a visceral descent into the underworld of junkies, card sharks, cops, and broken dreamers who populate the neon-lit jungle of Division Street, rendered with the raw, poetic ferocity that defined American urban realism. Algren writes with a jazz-inflected prose rhythm — staccato and lyrical in equal measure — that captures both the dark comedy and crushing tragedy of lives lived on society's margins. The novel argues, with unflinching moral urgency, that poverty and addiction are not character flaws but systemic wounds, making it as politically resonant today as it was upon publication. A landmark of 20th-century American literature, it leaves the reader haunted by a single, searing question: in a city that devours its own, can any man truly be free?