- William Burroughs

Naked Lunch: The Restored Text

By William Burroughs

A literary landmark and the most shocking novel in the English language, William Burroughs’ ‘Naked Lunch’ is an exhilarating ride into the darkest recesses of the human psyche.

Meet Bradley the Buyer, the best narcotics agent in the business. Say hello to Dr ‘Fingers’ Schafer, the Lobotomy Kid, and the sadistic, manipulative Dr Benway. And then there’s our narrator, Bill Lee, an Ivy League-educated narcotics addict. This is the story of Bill’s flight south from New York to a drug-and-sex-soaked retreat in Tangiers, where ambiguous Good and enticing Evil vie for the human soul. Welcome to Interzone …

‘Naked Lunch’ is a masterpiece of modern literature by the godfather of the Beat writers: as provocative and mordantly funny today as it was in 1959.

Author: William Burroughs
Format: Paperback
Release Date: 15 Apr 2010
Pages: 208
ISBN: 978-0-00-734190-0
William Burroughs was born in St Louis, Missouri in 1914. Immensely influential among the Beat writers of the 1950s – notably Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg – he already had an underground reputation before the appearance of his first important book, ‘Naked Lunch’. Originally published by the daring and influential Olympia Press (the original publishers of Henry Miller) in France in 1959, it aroused great controversy on publication and was not available in the US until 1962 and in the UK until 1964. The book was adapted for film by David Cronenberg in 1991. William Burroughs died in 1997.

”'Not a novel but a booty brought back from nightmare, a coldly implacable look at the dark side of our nature.” - New York Times

”'A roller-coaster ride through hell, a safari to the strangest people of the strangest planet - ourselves…sit back and gorge yourself on this feast of a novel.” - J. G. Ballard

”'A delirious exploration of sexual violence through the art of collage.” - Time Out

”'Prophesied with unerring accuracy the hideous modes that human behaviour would assume in the post-apocalyptic second half of the twentieth century. 'Naked Lunch' is essential reading for anyone who maintains any illusions about anything.” - Will Self

Praise for William Burroughs: -

'Burroughs is the greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift.' Jack Kerouac -

'Burroughs' voice is hard, derisive, inventive, free, funny, serious, poetic, indelibly American, a voice in which one hears transistor radios and old movies and all the clichés and all the cons and all the newspapers, all the peculiar optimism, all the failure.' Joan Didion -

'The only American novelist who may conceivably be possessed by genius.' Norman Mailer -

'In the English language, William Burroughs is the greatest writer alive. His imagination has tackled head-on the post-war world, with its huge bureaucracies and sinister complexes. He has a paranoid vision, but as he himself said: the psychotic is someone who knows what's really going on.' J. G. Ballard, Sunday Times -

”'William Burroughs broadened people’s conception of what makes humanity. In that way, he really was an American hero, a hero writer, and also just a great man.” - Lou Reed