William Burroughs: El Hombre Invisible

Repackaged and refreshed, this seminal biography of a counter-cultural icon is re-issued to form a core part of the Virgin backlist: "[Miles's] mastery of Beat Generation know-how must surely be unrivalled."
--Sunday Telegraph

Iconoclast; visionary; homosexual crusader; drug advocate; teacher and elder statesman to Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and the Beats; anti-hero guru to each successive counter-culture generation: William Burroughs remains one of the most complex and controversial American writers of the twentieth century.

A longtime heroin addict, Burroughs preferred to live abroad, away from America's Draconian drug laws. After killing his wife in a bizarre shooting accident, he moved to Tangier where he lived in a male brothel and wrote his celebrated bestseller Naked Lunch -- in Newsweek's words 'A masterpiece. A cry from Hell' -- as a series of letters to Allen Ginsberg. He lived at the Beat Hotel in Paris and spent a decade in London before returning as prodigal son to New York in 1974 after 25 years of self imposed exile.

BARRY MILES is the author of many seminal books on popular culture, including the authorised biography of Paul McCartney, Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now.