Nancy slaps palms with her friends and laughs a lot. She wears bell-bottom pants which swing when she walks through Uhuru Gardens. Nancy will finish secondary school this year, but she doesnÝt really know what will happen to her after that. Deo reads seri ously, but he also spends many evenings in bars. He works in a factory laboratory, where his Form VI education elevates him above the other workers. He knows that there are some Ùbig menÝ who live off the sweat of the others at the factory; it isnÝt right, but what does a lone youth do about it? Deo also wants to marry Nancy. Magege, the manager of 'Mountain Goat Rubber Factory', has the means to fulfill all his personal wants±including his taste for young girls. NancyÝs mother, Maria, has no private means except selling her own body and her dream of a better life for her daughter. The Wicked Walk swirls around the lives of these four, set on a backdrop of workersÝ struggles and the rhythm of Dar es Salaam as city dwellers, and especially youths, know it. In this searingly honest, and at times poignant, novel the author raises important questions about the position of women in society, the causes of prostitution, corrupt and inefficient managers, and the groupings of youth who struggle towards ideological cla rity as they attempt to understand their society.