The Place of Dead Roads - Softcover

Burroughs, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007341938 ISBN 13: 9780007341931

Publisher: Fourth Estate, 2010

Synopsis

A controversial reworking of well-trodden American myth by the author of ‘Naked Lunch’.

This surreal fable, set in America’s Old West, features a cast of notorious characters: The Crying Gun, who breaks into tears at the sight of his opponent; The Priest, who goes into gunfights giving his adversaries the last rites; and The Nihilistic Kid himself, Kim Carson, who, with a succession of beautiful sidekicks, sets out to challenge the morality of small-town America.

Fantastical and humorous, ‘The Place of Dead Roads’ continues William Burroughs’ exploration of society’s controlling forces – the State, the Church, women, literature, drugs – with a style that is utterly unique in twentieth-century literature.

About this title

About the Author:

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'. William Burroughs died in 1997.

Review:

'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.' JG Ballard, Sunday Times '"The Place of Dead Roads" is Burroughs at his very best, with the same remarkable ear for dialogue and effortless originality.' Guardian

About this edition

• Publisher: Fourth Estate
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0007341938
• ISBN 13: 9780007341931
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272