A walk on the wild side ([New] ed.)

A twentieth-century classic. The book that inspired Lou Reed's most famous song. Foreword by Russell Banks. Dove Findhom is a naive country boy who busts out of Hicksville, Texas in pursuit of a better life in New Orleans.

Amongst the downtrodden prostitutes, bootleggers and hustlers of the old French Quarter, Dove finds only hopelessness, crime and despair.

His quest uncovers a harrowing grotesque of the American Dream. "A Walk in the Wild Side" is an angry, lonely, large-hearted and often funny masterpiece that has captured the imaginations of every generation since its first publication in 1956, and that rendered a world later immortalised in Lou Reed's classic song.