With its depictions of the downtrodden prostitutes, bootleggers, and
hustlers of Perdido Street in the old French Quarter of 1930s New
Orleans, A Walk on the Wild Side found a place in the imaginations of
all the generations that have followed since. Perhaps his own words
describe the book best: "The book asks why lost people sometimes develop
into greater human beings than those who have never been lost in their
whole lives. Why men who have suffered at the hands of other men are the
natural believers in humanity, while those whose part has been simply to
acquire, to take all and give nothing, are the most contemptuous of
mankind."
