Best Selling Books by William S. Burroughs

Fires the reader into a textual outer space to show us our burning planet and to reveal the operations of the Nova Mob in all their ugliness. This book reveals how Nova Express was cut from a wealth of typescripts to create startling new forms of poetic possibility.

"The Soft Machine is Burroughs'' original cut-up novel, first in an experimental trilogy that includes Nova Express and The Ticket That Exploded. A surreal space-age odyssey and a total assault on the powers that turn humans into machines, the book draws the reader into an unmappable textual space where nothing is true and everyting is permitted"--Back cover.

"This extremely short little book finds Burroughs in his funniest, clearest and most vicious voice with a brief introduction and four grotesque, pointed and politically themed "routines" that walk the line between essays and short stories."--goodreads

''He felt a sudden deep pity for the finger joint that lay there on the dresser, a few drops of blood gathering around the white bone.'' A deliberately severed finger, a junky''s Christmas miracle and a Tangier con-artist, among others, feature in these hallucinogenic sketches and stories from the infamous Beat legend. Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York''s underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.

In January 1953, William Burroughs began a seven-month expedition into the jungles of South America, ostensibly to find yage, the fabled hallucinogen of the Amazon. But Burroughs also cast his anthropological-satiric eye over the local regimes...

In 1944, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs were charged as accessories to murder. One of their friends, Lucien Carr, had stabbed another, David Kammerrer. Carr had come to each of them and confessed; Kerouac helped him get rid of the weapon - neither told the police. For this failing they were arrested. Months later, the two writers - unpublished at the time - collaborated on And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, a fictionalized account of the summer of the killing.

Written at a turning point in his life - when he was kicking drugs in Tangiers, writing Naked Lunch, and emerging from the literary underworld, these letters from Burroughs to his young friend Ginsberg are not only an intimate and diaristic account.

First published in 1963 and representing Burroughs''s literary breakthrough in the UK, Dead Fingers Talk is, in the words of Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris, "e;a prophetic work of haunting power,"e; a unique experiment in writing that has for too long been overlooked. Combining new material with rearranged selections from Naked Lunch and his cut-up novels The Soft Machine and The Ticket That Exploded, the book is a fascinating precursor to remix and mash-up forms in art and music, which owe much to Burroughs''s influence.This newly restored edition of Dead Fingers Talk, based on the novel''s archival manuscripts, will delight all Burroughs fans and lovers of experimental literature, and offer a new insight into the artistic process of one of the most original and influential writers of the twentieth century

An intense, compelling conversation between legendary Beat icons William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, featuring photos by Ginsberg, and details of Burroughs'' shamanic exorcism of the demon that led him to shoot his wife and drove his work as a writer.

Långt innan Trainspotting och Requiem for a Dream sprängde William S. Burroughs gränserna för hur man kunde skriva om droger. Junky är Burroughs till stor del självbiografiska roman från 1953 om hans eget heroinmissbruk, en osminkad skildring av en alltmer destruktiv livssituation. I ett naket och öppet porträtt av småtjuveri, lögner och misär - från New York via New Orleans till Mexico City - får vi en unik inblick i de fysiska och psykiska påfrestningar som missbruket innebär. Med sin kliniska, nästan dokumentära stil, undersöker Burroughs de destruktiva krafterna bakom beroendet, samtidigt som han reflekterar över samhällets normer och de gråzoner där moral och lag kolliderar. I översättning av Einar Heckscher. WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS [1914-1997] föddes i St. Louis. Efter studier vid Harvard och diverse kortvariga anställningar, som skadedjursutrotare och privatdetektiv, råkade han i klammer med rättvisan och tvingades i exil. Under femtio-, sextio- och sjuttiotalen bodde han bland annat i Mexiko City, Tanger, Paris och London. I Mexiko började han skriva romaner. Junky blev hans debut [1953], medan Queer [skriven under samma tid] kom ut först 1985. Vid tiden för publiceringen hade Burroughs hunnit bli en av den amerikanska efterkrigstidens viktigaste författare, vars unika språkradikalitet haft betydelse långt utanför litteraturens gränser. »Den enda nu levande amerikanska romanförfattaren som möjligen kan sägas vara ett geni.« Norman Mailer

"The mind-boggling story of a man whose alternate selves take him on a fantastic journey through space, time, and sexuality."--Back cover.

13 agosto 1944: il giovane Lucien Carr, per difendersi dalle avances dell’amico David Kammerer, lo ammazza e ne getta il corpo nelle acque dello Hudson. Due altri suoi amici, William Burroughs e Jack Kerouac, vengono arrestati per non aver denunciato l’omicidio. Forse anche per elaborare a modo loro l’accaduto, i due scrittori ne tracciano in seguito un resoconto a quattro mani iperrealistico e visionario, dissepolto solo in anni recenti. Raccontando a capitoli alternati, Burroughs e Kerouac assumono il punto di vista di due personaggi-narratori: Burroughs quello di Will Dennison, barista originario del Nevada, sempre preceduto dalla sua «ombra di un metro e novanta», Kerouac quello del marinaio Mike Ryko, «un finlandese diciannovenne dai capelli rossi». Attraverso il loro sguardo e intorno ai protagonisti del tragico fatto di cronaca vediamo così delinearsi una folta compagnia anarco-utopista e sgangherata, euforica e malinconica, che trascorre giorni e notti bevendo e fumando in pub luminescenti, leggendo Faulkner e sognando di raggiungere Parigi. Sullo sfondo, una New York caotica, atterrita e aggressiva, una metropoli di fine guerra in cui il caos visivo è tutt’uno con quello acustico, con le radio che trasmettono le note della Prima Sinfonia di Brahms o il reportage concitato di un giornalista su un circo in fiamme dove «gli ippopotami si sono lessati nelle loro vasche». In questo unico, anomalo dettato contrappuntistico il lettore può trovare miracolosamente armonizzati gli stili e le lingue di due protagonisti primari della beat generation: il realismo «on the road» con andamento jazz di Kerouac (specie nei dialoghi) e le accensioni lisergiche di Burroughs, preannuncio del suo sperimentalismo allucinato.

William Burroughs died in August 1997, after a lifetime of notoriety. In his final years, he was writing only in his journals. The last nine months of his diaries are here, in Last Words, and they form a complex, rarely seen, personal portrait of Burroughs at the end of his life, coming to terms with aging and death.

In this trenchant science-fiction screen treatment written in the mid-1970s, William S. Burroughs outlines the coming medical-care apocalypse: a Dante-esque horror show brought to a boil by a mutated virus and right-wing politics, set in a future all too near. The author of Naked Lunch, Junky, Port of Saints, Cities of the Red Night, Queer, and Exterminator treats this topical story in ultimate terms, with the dry, sophisticated humor he has mastered like no other modern writer.

As seen through the eyes of Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, this is the gripping story behind the acclaimed film Kill Your Darlings, starring Daniel Radcliffe.In 1944, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs were charged as accessories to murder. One of their friends, Lucien Carr, had stabbed another, David Kammerrer. Carr had come to each of them and confessed; Kerouac helped him get rid of the weapon - neither told the police. For this failing they were arrested. Months later, the two writers - unpublished at the time - collaborated on And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, a fictionalized account of the summer of the killing.William S. Burroughs was born in 1914. His first published novel was the largely autobiographical Junky, which remains a classic depiction of drug dependency. He died in 1997.Jack Kerouac was born in 1922. In 1947, he hitchhiked across America and wrote his most famous novel On the Road. He died in 1969.''The true(ish) story that Burroughs and Kerouac tell is sleazy, raw and painfully close to the bone even by the standards of the Beats ... [It''s] also fascinating for the insight it gives into Kerouac and Burroughs'' development ... A compelling read'' Sam Jordison, Guardian''Their efforts cohere into a spare existential narrative which races to a cruel denouement. Hippos stands the test of time; it is admirably hard-boiled'' Independent''Anyone interested in the making of the Beat generation will be fascinated by this survival from its beginnings'' Literary Review''Transfixingly readable ... It memorably evokes the demi-monde of New York at the war''s end, with its honky-tonk parlours, automats, bars and spaghetti joints. As a period piece, it can''t be beat'' Evening Standard

An unnerving tale of an addict adrift in New York, Tangiers and a nightmarish wasteland known as Interzone. The novel has exerted its influence on many authors regarding the relationship of art and obscenity, and on the shape of music, film, and media. This restored text includes editorial corrections and incorporates Burroughs'' notes, and several essays he wrote over the years about the book.