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Naked Lunch

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Fifty years ago, Olympia Press in Paris issued a book that redefined not just American literature, but American culture. Naked Lunch, the U.S. edition of which soon followed from Grove Press, is one of the most important and influential novels of the twentieth century. An unnerving tale of an addict unmoored in New York, Tangier, and ultimately a n...more

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And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks

William S. Burroughs

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More than sixty years ago, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac sat down in New York City to write a novel about the summer of 1944, when one of their friends killed another in a moment of brutal and tragic bloodshed. The two authors were then at the dawn of their careers, having yet to write anything of note. Alternating chapters and narrators, B...more

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Junky: The Definitive Text of 'Junk' (Penguin Modern Classics)

William S Burroughs

(17 reviews )

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Burroughs' first novel, a largely autobiographical account of the constant cycle of drug dependency, cures and relapses, remains the most unflinching, unsentimental account of addiction ever written. Through junk neighbourhoods in New York, New Orleans and Mexico City, through time spent kicking, time spent dealing and time rolling drunks for money...more

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You can't win

William S Burroughs

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The favorite book of William Burroughs. A journey into the hobo underworld, freight hopping around the still Wild West, becoming a highwayman and member of the yegg (criminal) brotherhood, getting hooked on opium, doing stints in jail or escaping, often with the assistance of crooked cops or judges. Our lost history revived.. With an introduction b...more

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Cities of the Red Night

William S. Burroughs

(24 reviews )

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While young men wage war against an evil empire of zealous mutants, the population of this modern inferno is afflicted with the epidemic of a radioactive virus. An opium-infused apocalyptic vision from the legendary author of Naked Lunch - the first of the trilogy with The Place of Dead Roads and his final novel The Western Lands.

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The Atrocity Exhibition (Flamingo Modern Classics)

J.G. Ballard

(15 reviews )

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First published in 1970 and widely regarded as a prophetic masterpiece, this is a groundbreaking experimental novel by the acclaimed author of 'Crash' and 'Super-Cannes', who has supplied explanatory notes for this new edition. The irrational, all-pervading violence of the modern world is the subject of this extraordinary tour de force. The centra...more

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Queer

William S. Burroughs

(20 reviews )

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Written at the same time as JUNKY, QUEER revolves around a homosexual relationship in Mexico City, and William Lee's search for the mythical hallucinogen yage in South America. Because of its themes of homosexuality and drug use, this book would not find a publisher until 1986.

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1001 books , 1600-present , 1900-1999 , 1950-1999 , 1950s , drug addiction , fiction themes , gay men , human qualities & behavior , junkies , medicine & health , obsession , questing , remorse , types of characters

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The Wild Boys

William S. Burroughs

(12 reviews )

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Compared to his Nova Tetralogy, Burroughs has adopted a more conventional style here, borrowing liberally from genre fiction. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, THE WILD BOYS tells the story of teenage gangs of marauders that emerge from North Africa in 1969, first as "gasoline gangs," who pour gas and ignite people for fun. But when one boy is used ...more

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The Cat Inside

William S Burroughs

(11 reviews )

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A meditation on the long and mysterious relationship between cats and their human hosts by one of America's leading literary outlaws traces back to the Egyptian cult of the "animal other" and includes anecdotes about the author's own cats. Reprint.

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The Western Lands

William S Burroughs

(13 reviews )

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Burroughs's eagerly awaited final novel in the trilogy begun with Cities of the Red Night and The Place of Dead Roads is a profound, revealing, and often astonishing meditation on mortality, loneliness, nuclear peril, and the inextinguishable hope for life after death.

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