“‘I been hungry all my life, all the time,’ he told himself, ‘I never get my teeth into anythin’ all my own.’ Too hungry for the arid place he’d been born in…. A hunger that might, wolflike, lie sleeping for an hour or a day. Or else waken and keep a man in trouble the rest of his life….” This is the story of Bruno “Lefty” Bicek — raised in the dark shadow of the Division Street El, deep in the Chicago slums — of Lefty’s girl, Steffi, and of his gang. It is the story of a struggle — struggle to climb out of the slums, to appease the hunger, to make a name that would bring some kind of glory. In the classic American realist tradition, Nelson Algren has created a novel that vibrates with the life of Chicago, the teeming Polish slums, the boxing rings, the brothels, and the jails — and those like Lefty Bicek and his Steffie who people this world.
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