William Burroughs

Iconoclast; visionary; homosexual crusader; drug advocate; teacher and elder statesman to Jack Kracouac, Allen Ginsberg and the Beats; anti-hero guru to each successive counter-culture generation: Willaim 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 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 a bestselling author of numerous biographies and cultural histories of the Beat Generation luminaries, The Beatles, the sixties movements and its musicians. He lives in London.

"Miles traces threads of Burroughs' images from childhood to tough elder genius, isolating sensitive themes, following recurrences and evolution of routines, clarifying Burroughs' comic pathetic heroic philosophies and insights into coherent whole. Miles familiarises even old close readers with a fine map of Burroughs' mind." - Allan Ginsberg

"There can be no more effective introduction." - Q

"Gives shape to a life that would otherwise seem crowded and aimless." - Independent on Sunday