With its depictions of the downtrodden prostitutes, bootleggers, and hustlers of Perdido Street in the old French Quarter of 1930s New Orleans, “A Walk in the Wild Side” has found a place in the imaginations of all generations since it first appeared. As Algren admitted, the book “wasn’t written until long after it had been walked… I found my way to the streets on the other side of the Southern Pacific station, where the big jukes were singing something called ‘Walking the Wild Side of Life.’ I’ve stayed pretty much on that side of the curb ever since.” Perhaps the author’s own words describe this classic work best: “The book asks why lost people sometimes develop into greater human beings than those who have never been lost in their whole lives. Why men who have suffered at the hands of other men are the natural believers in humanity, while those whose part has been simply to acquire, to take all and give nothing, are the most contemptuous of mankind.”

National Book Award for Fiction Seven Stories Press is proud to release the first critical edition of Nelson Algren's masterpiece on the 50th anniversary of its publication in November 1949. Considered Algren's finest work, The Man with the Golden Arm recounts one man's self-destruction in Chicago's Polish ghetto. The novel's protagonist, Frankie Machine, remains a tragic American hero half a century after Algren created this gritty and relentlessly dark tale of modern urban society. *** ‘Powerful, grisly, antic, horrifying, poetic, compassionate… [there is] virtually nothing more that one could ask.’ – New York Times Book Review ‘A thriller that packs more of a punch than Pulp Fiction and more grittiness than either Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett, The Man with the Golden Arm is incredibly lyrical, as poetic as it is dramatic, combining the brutal dialogue of guys and broads with dreamlike images, and puncturing the harrowing narrative with revelations that flesh out every tragic figure into a fully-realised, complex character.’ – The Scotsman ‘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.’ – Chicago Sun Times ‘A stirring hard-boiled read.’ – Maxim ‘An extraordinary piece of fiction… If the Bridget Jones brigade somehow drifted Nelson Algren’s way the world would undoubtedly be a better place and Rebel Inc’s bottom line invisible without a telescope. Keep my dream alive and buy this book.’ – The Crack ‘A true novelists triumph.’ – Time ‘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 Hemingway ‘The finest American novel published since the war.’ – Washington Post Book World ‘I was going to write a war novel. But it turned out to be this Golden Arm thing. I mean, the war kind of slipped away, and those people with the hypos came crawling along and that was it.’ – Nelson Algren ‘Profound and richly atmospheric.’- The Guardian

На памятном вечере 27 апреля 2012 года в московской Библиотеке-читальне имени Тургенева в честь столетия Норы Галь, выдающегося мастера русского литературного перевода, были вручены премии за переводы рассказов с английского языка.  Специальная премия «За решение особой переводческой задачи» (20 тысяч рублей) была присуждена Максиму Немцову  (Москва) за перевод рассказа Нелсона Олгрена  «Ей-бо», целиком представляющего собой монолог мелкого уголовника, изъясняющегося на зубодробительном сленге

В рубрике «Пропущенные имена» — американец Нельсон Ольгрен (1909–1981). Три рассказа в переводе Ольги Кулагиной, действие которых происходит «в неспокойные двадцатые, когда Чикаго был еще опасным городом»