There is pleasure of a hard and real sort here even for those who have never read Algren before. Of course, the specifics of his world, of his Chicago, have changed. But the human condition and social inequities he saw are still with us. – Chicago Tribune
Among the most serious and moving in American literature…With these books, Algren defined postwar American urban fiction, interweaving threads of social realism, his own leftist politics and noir. – Los Angeles Times
Nelson Algren has been acknowledged as a master of that American Realism touched with poetry, which attempts to give voice to the insulted and injured. He is a philosopher of deprivation, a moral force of considerable dimensions, and a wonderful user of the language. –Donald Barthelme
So long, baby … walk pretty all the way, says Ralph to his fourteen-year-old girlfriend on her way to the wild side, in the last story Nelson Algren ever published, gathered here in a treasure trove of previously uncollected fiction, poetry, essays, and reviews. Published during the centennial year of Algren’s birth, Entrapment and Other Writings contains some of Algren’s earliest short stories, as well as the last two he wrote before his death in 1981. The centerpiece of the collection is Algren’s unfinished novel, Entrapment. Based on the life of his friend Margo, a heroin addict and prostitute, the novel demonstrates some of his finest and most provocative writing.
Nelson Algren (1909-1981) wrote of the despised urban underbelly of America before it was fashionable to do so, and he still stands as one of our most defiant and enduring novelists. His novels include The Man with the Golden Arm, winner of the first National Book Award; A Walk on the Wild Side ; and Never Come Morning.
Editor Brooke Horvath is the author of Understanding Nelson Algren. A poet as well, Horvath is a professor of English at Kent State University.
