Book description
In this funny, nightmarish masterpiece of imaginative excess, grotesque
characters engage in acts of violent one-upmanship, boundless riches
mangle a corner of Africa into a Bacchanalian utopia, and technology,
flesh and violence fuse with and undo each other. A fragmentary,
freewheeling novel, it sees wild boys engage in vigorous, ritualistic
sex and drug taking, as well as pranksterish guerrilla warfare and open
combat with a confused and outmatched army.
The Wild Boys
shows why Burroughs is a writer unlike any other, able to make
captivating the explicit and horrific. William S. Burroughs was born
on February 5, 1914 in St Louis. In work and in life Burroughs expressed
a lifelong subversion of the morality, politics and economics of modern
America. To escape those conditions, and in particular his treatment as
a homosexual and a drug-user, Burroughs left his homeland in 1950, and
soon after began writing. By the time of his death he was widely
recognised as one of the most politically trenchant, culturally
influential, and innovative artists of the twentieth century. His
numerous books include Naked Lunch, Junky, Queer, Nova Express,
Interzone, The Wild Boys, The Ticket That Exploded and The Soft Machine
. After living in Mexico City, Tangier, Paris, and London, Burroughs
finally returned to America in 1974. He died in 1997.
