Entrapment And Other Writings

(Paperback)

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Description

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 his earliest short stories as well as the last two he wrote before his death in 1981. The centrepiece 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 Algren's finest and most provocative writing.

Reviews

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 Bartheleme


Nelson Algren could talk about hell in such a way that he touched heaven. Ross Macdonald

Author Bio

One of the most neglected of modern American authors and also one of the best loved, NELSON ALGREN (19091981) 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. Algrens 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 Chicagos 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.