Nelson Algren was an American writer. He may be best known for The Man with the Golden Arm, a 1949 novel that won the National Book Award and was adapted as a 1955 film of the same name.
According to Harold Augenbraum, "in the late 1940s and early 1950s he was one of the best known literary writers in America." The lover of French writer Simone de Beauvoir, he was featured as the hero of her novel The Mandarins, set in Paris and Chicago.
He is considered "a bard of the down-and-outer", based on this book and his novel A Walk on the Wild Side. The latter was adapted as a play of the same name, produced on Broadway. Its fame increased with Lou Reed's song of the same title.