Celebrated playwright, author and screenwriter Louis Nowra loves King Cross. A long-time resident, he makes us reimagine the most infamous and misunderstood place in Australia, a magnet for bohemianism, cosmopolitanism and organised crime.

In a wildly energetic book that walks the streets, sits in bars, chats with the locals, and spends time in clubs and apartments where you wish the walls could talk, Nowra traverses the history and the future of his beloved neighbourhood. He burrows beneath the sensationalist Underbelly ‘sex and sin’ narrative, revealing stories and a cast of characters – some household names, others little-known – that not even a writer could conjure up.

Kings Cross is a no-holds barred place where backpackers, prostitutes, strippers, chefs, mad men, poets, beggars, booksellers, doctors, gangsters, sailors, musicians, drug traffickers, eccentrics, judges and artists live side by side. Part flâneur, part historian and part eyewitness, Louis Nowra is the best possible guide to a place that is both real and a state of mind.