The Devil's Stocking - Softcover

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

One of the most neglected of modern American authors and also one of the best loved, NELSON ALGREN (1909&;1981) believed that &;literature is made upon any occasion that a challenge is put to the legal apparatus by conscience in touch with humanity.&; His own voluminous body of work stands up to that belief. Algren&;s powerful voice rose from the urban wilderness of postwar Chicago, and it is to that city of hustlers, addicts and scamps that he returned again and again, eventually raising Chicago&;s &;lower depths&; up onto a stage for the whole world to behold. Recipient of the first National Book Award for fiction and lauded by Hemingway as &;one of the two best authors in America,&; Algren remains among our most defiant and enduring novelists. His work includes five major novels, two short fiction collections, a book-length poem and several collections of reportage. A source of inspiration to artists as diverse as Kurt Vonnegut and Donald Barthelme, Studs Terkel and Lou Reed, Algren died on May 9, 1981, within days of his appointment as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.