num_pages: 369
description: Frankie Machine reckons he's a tough guy in the Chicago underworld, dealing cards in a backstreet gambling den and hustling two-bit scams to pay for a heroin addiction he wants to kick but can't. He convinces himself that playing "the tubs" is the only way out of he poverty and addiction that is consuming him.Around him revolve the lives of Sophie, his crippled nagging wife; Molly, the saloon-bar stripper who loves him and tries to keep him free from the cops and his drug habit; Nifty Louie, Frankie's neighbourhood dealer; and Sparrow the punk, unreformable petty theif and Frankie's closest friend.With consummate skill Algren lays bare the tragedy and humour of Frankie's world, the people on both sides of the law who are trapped in poverty, frustration and despair. Algren's sympathetic portrait of people living in the Chicago slums is one of the classics of modern literature and was the first-ever winner of the National Book Award.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. - Ernest HemingwayPowerful, grisly, antic, horrifying, poetic, compassionate... (there is) virtually nothing more that one could ask. - New York Times Book ReviewAlgren is an artist whose sympathy is as a large as Victor Hugo's, an artist who ranks, with this novel, among our best American authors. - Chicago Sun TimesA true novelist's triumph. - Time...I was going to write a war novel. But it turned out to be the Golden Arm thing. I mean, the way kind of slipped away, and those people with the hypos came along and that was it. - Nelson Algren
language: English
title: The Man with the Golden Arm
titlecomplete: The Man with the Golden Arm
characters: Sophie Majcinek, Sparrow Saltskin, Niftie Louie Fomorowsky, Frankie Majcinek, Molly Novotny
genres: Noir, Crime, American, Literary Fiction, Classics, Novels, Fiction, Literature, Mystery, 20th Century
ratings_count: 2967
places: Chicago, Illinois
awards: awardedAt: -631123200000
name: National Book Award
category: Fiction
publisher: Rebel Inc.