Search results for ""Author Iceberg Slim""

Iceberg Slim's first three novels (Pimp, Trick Baby and Mama Black Widow) offered some of the rawest and bleakest visions of urban America ever put to paper. Their refusal to compromise, coupled with their reflection of society's underworld and underbelly, rapidly won him a major following.The Naked Soul of Iceberg Slim, however, proves to be something of a departure in the sense that it is a series of short personal recollections. Make no mistake, the passion, razor-sharp perception and unflinching honesty remains and, if anything, is all the more chilling for its total directness.The wisdom he gained from a life of serious excess and violence is to be found within this varied collection of soul-bearing confessions that reveal why Iceberg Slim has been revered so widely as the spokesman of the street.This edition includes an introduction by Iceberg Slim's widow, Diane Millman Beck.

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Airtight Willie and Me is a collection of six tales from the underground, all of them characterized by Iceberg Slim's distinctive and unforgettable prose. From the opening story, in which Slim meets Airtight Willie, one of New York's slickest con men, to Satin, a classic tale of revenge in which a heist goes badly wrong, the reader is hooked into a rollercoaster ride through the badlands of urban America. Compelling always, funny sometimes, and typically bleak in their endings, Slim's slices of city life are important social documents that scorch most contemporary into submission. There is no moralizing bullshit, no romanticized illusions, few redemming factors - just straight-up sawn-off shotgun blasts from the 'King of the Ghetto'.

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Iceberg Slim's third slice of ghetto life is recounted straight from the hip by Otis Tilson, a schizophrenic and ageing drag queen. However, the dominating presence and epicentre of this tragic tale is his suffocating mother - Mama Black Widow.Poisoned by the bigotry and abuse she suffered in early life, she in turn infects those that surround her. The damage she does to all she loves is deeply disturbing, no-one is left unscarred.Set in the dark hell of double standard justice, radical bigotry and criminal economic freeze-out, Mama Black Widow, proves arguably to be the most intense story ever penned by the man whose work has come to be regarded as the epitome of street fiction.

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In Iceberg Slim's first novel, Trick Baby, he told the unforgettable tale of White Folks, a white Negro who uses his colour as his trump card in the tough game of the Con. Blue-eyed, light-haired and fair-skinned, White Folks was to become the most incredible con man the ghetto ever spawned.Long White Con takes up where Trick Baby left off. After the death of his partner and mentor, Blue Howard, White Folks hooks up with the Vicksburg Kid, who completes his con education. Together they form a formidable duo, playing for the highest stakes, pulling off the most ambitious con of the lot - The Unhappy Virgin Game. Fleecing wealthy fools is the name of the game but when the sums involved get to the levels seen in Long White Con, the consequences of any slip can be fatal.Like all of Iceberg Slim's work, Long White Con takes the reader into a world rarely seen in print, combining wicked humour with streetwise knowledge and philosophy. The result is another page-turning classic of hard-boiled fiction.

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Doom Fox is the final instalment in Iceberg Slim's searing sequence of highly-charged books that began with his critically acclaimed and multi-million selling autobiography, Pimp. Slim's powerful, raw prose and eye-opening reflections of black ghetto realities have helped to redefine modern American literature, offering the reader a glimpse into lifestyles and language never before seen in print. Doom Fox tells the tragic story of three generations of the Allen family in post-war L. A. Written with Slim's typically disturbing honesty and sharp humour, it paints their lives with compassion, telling their stories in their own words, in the language of the street. The result is another riveting and potent urban parable, a bitter coomentary on a society that has as its core a legalized policy of discrimination.

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Iceberg Slim's last published novel is perhaps his greatest. Death Wish, written in Slim's typically hard-hitting and highly compulsive prose, tells the story of Chicago's Mafia and the power struggle that ensues when the greedy Don, Jimmy Collucci, attempts to become the king-pin of Chicago's ''Honored Society''. Not only is this a portrayal of an organisation whose working details Slim knew intimately but we also see Mafia infighting set against a backdrop of the underworld in its entirety.For Jimmy Collucci has had a lifelong hatred pf dedicated Black Warrior, Jesse Taylor, against whom he has regularly competed for turf on the streets of Chicago. And Jessie Taylor has managed to get himself in a position from which he is confident that he can take on Collucci and his ruthless outfit.The result is bloody and riveting. Another masterpiece from the man whose prose redefined post-war American literature and who remains one of the most startlingly original and hard-boiled writers America has produced.

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Trick Baby charts the rise of White Folks, a white Negro who uses his colour as a trump card in the tough game of the Con. Blue-eyed, light-haired and white-skinned, White Folks is the most incredible con man the ghetto ever spawned, a hustler in the jungle of Southside Chicago where only the sharpest survive.With his partner Blue, an old hand who teaches him the tricks of the trade, White Folks rises to the top of his profession. The cons he pulls off get more and more lucrative and dangerous until one day they go too far...

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In this astonishing account, Iceberg Slim reveals the secret inner world of the pimp, and the smells, sounds, fears and petty triumphs of his world. A legendary figure of the Chicago underworld, this is his story: from defending his mother against the men in their lives to becoming a giant of the streets. A seething tale of brutality, cunning and greed, Pimp is a harrowing portrait of life on the wrong side of the tracks, and a rich warning from a true survivor.

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