Book description
An opium addict is lost in the jungle; young men wage war against an
empire of mutants; a handsome young pirate faces his execution; and the
world's population is infected with a radioactive epidemic. These
stories are woven together in a single tale of mayhem and chaos. In the
first novel of the trilogy continued in
The Place of Dead Roads
and The Western Lands
, William Burroughs sharply satirizes modern society in a poetic and
shocking story of sex, drugs, disease and adventure. 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.
