Frankie Machine, a veteran of the Second World War, returns to Chicago’s Northwest side with a morphine habit. Nicknamed the ‘kid with the golden arm’, Frankie is an aspiring drummer by day and an illicit card-dealer by night. In Molly, an old flame, he sees the chance for redemption, for hard work and success – but the demons that chase Frankie are not quite ready to let go.
Nelson Algren’s critically acclaimed and enormously powerful novel probes the lives of the displaced and dispossessed of post-war America.