William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs (1914-1997) was an American author, painter, and spoken-word performer who has had a wide-ranging influence on American culture. Jack Kerouac called him the “greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift.” Norman Mailer declared him “the only American writer who may be conceivably possessed by genius.” A postmodernist and a key figure of the beat generation, he focused his art on a relentless subversion of the moral, political, and economic conventions of modern American society, as reflected in his often darkly humorous and sardonic satire. He wrote eighteen novels and novellas, six short-story collections, and four collections of essays. No fewer than five books of his interviews and correspondence have been published. He also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians and made many appearances in films. He was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1983 and in the following year was appointed to the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government.
All Books By William S. Burroughs
Cities of the Red Night
- By: William S. Burroughs
- Narrator: Ray Porter
- Length: 9 hours 33 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2016
- Language: English
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3.76(4363 ratings)
From one of the founders of the beat generation and the 1960s counterculture comes this opening novel of a series available now in audio for the first time.
An opium addict is lost in the jungle; young men wage war against an empire of mutants; a handsome young pirate faces his execution; and the world’s population is infected with a radioactive epidemic. These stories are woven together in a single tale of mayhem and chaos. In the first novel of the trilogy continued in The Place of Dead Roads and The Western Lands, William Burroughs sharply satirizes modern society in a poetic and shocking story of sex, drugs, disease, and adventure.
... Read moreExterminator!
- By: William S. Burroughs
- Narrator: Richard Powers
- Length: 4 hours 57 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2016
- Language: English
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3.73(2559 ratings)
Conspirators plot to explode a train carrying nerve gas. A perfect servant suddenly reveals himself to be the insidious Dr. Fu Manchu. Science-fantasy wars, racism, corporate capitalism, drug addiction, and various medical and psychiatric horrors all play their parts in this mosaic, experimental novel. Here is William S. Burroughs at his coruscating and hilarious best.
... Read moreNaked Lunch
- By: William S. Burroughs
- Narrator: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 10 hours 24 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2009
- Language: English
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3.46(75936 ratings)
Naked Lunch is one of the most important novels of the twentieth century. Exerting its influence on authors like Thomas Pynchon, J. G. Ballard, and William Gibson; on the relationship between art and obscenity; and on the shape of music, film, and media generally, it is one of the books that redefined not just literature but American culture.
Naked Lunch is the unnerving tale of Bill Lee, addicted to hustlers and narcotics, and his monumental descent into Hell. His journey takes him from New York to Tangiers, as he runs from the police and searches for a place to buy and take drugs. Ultimately, he enters the hallucinatory fantasy world of the “Interzone,” a nightmarish urban wasteland where individual freedom confronts the forces of totalitarianism.
Reedited by Burroughs scholar Barry Miles and Burroughs’ longtime editor James Grauerholz, Naked Lunch: The Restored Text corrects errors present in previous editions and incorporates Burroughs’ notes on the text, several essays he wrote about the book, an appendix of new material, and alternate drafts from the original manuscript. For the Burroughs enthusiast and the neophyte, this volume is a valuable and fresh experience of this classic of our culture.
... Read moreNova Express
- By: William S. Burroughs
- Narrator: Ramiz Monsef
- Length: 5 hours 40 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2016
- Language: English
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3.67(2787 ratings)
The most ferociously political and prophetic book of the Cut-Up Trilogy, Nova Express fires the reader into a textual outer space, the better to see our burning planet and the operations of the Nova Mob in all their ugliness. As with The Soft Machine and The Ticket That Exploded, Burroughs deploys his cut-up methods both to scramble the scripts that fix our destinies and to create startling new forms of poetic possibility. Nova Express is a visionary demand to take back the world that has been stolen from us.
... Read moreThe Place of Dead Roads
- By: William S. Burroughs
- Narrator: Ray Porter
- Length: 9 hours 49 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2016
- Language: English
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3.9(2004 ratings)
From the beat generation and counterculture author William S. Burroughs comes the second novel of the Red Night trilogy, available in audio for the first time.
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 Carsons, a homosexual gunslinger who, with a succession of beautiful sidekicks, sets out to challenge the morality of small-town America and fight for intergalactic freedom.
Fantastical and humorous, The Place of Dead Roads continues 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.
... Read moreThe Soft Machine
- By: William S. Burroughs
- Narrator: Ramiz Monsef
- Length: 6 hours 20 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2016
- Language: English
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3.43(5388 ratings)
In The Soft Machine, William S. Burroughs begins an adventure that will take us into the dark recesses of his imagination, a region where nothing is sacred, nothing taboo. Continuing his ferocious verbal assault on hatred, hype, poverty, war, bureaucracy, and addiction in all its forms, Burroughs gives us a surreal space odyssey through the wounded galaxies in a book only he could create.
A total assault on the powers that turn humans into machines by writing and fixing our life scripts, Burroughs’ original “cut-up” book was itself rewritten in three different forms. This new edition of The Soft Machine clarifies for the first time the extraordinary history of its writing and rewriting, demolishes the myths of his chance-based writing methods, and demonstrates for a new generation the significance of Burroughs’ greatest experiment.
... Read moreThe Ticket That Exploded
- By: William S. Burroughs
- Narrator: Ramiz Monsef
- Length: 9 hours 25 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2016
- Language: English
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3.61(2105 ratings)
In The Ticket That Exploded, William S. Burroughs’ grand “cut-up” trilogy that starts with The Soft Machine and continues through Nova Express reaches its climax as inspector Lee and the Nova Police engage the Nova Mob in a decisive battle for the planet. Only Burroughs could make such a nightmare vision of scientists and combat troops, of ad men and con men whose deceitful language has spread like an incurable disease be at once so frightening and so enthralling.
... Read moreThe Western Lands
- By: William S. Burroughs
- Narrator: Ray Porter
- Length: 8 hours 45 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2016
- Language: English
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4.05(1852 ratings)
Here is the final novel of Burroughs’ Red Night trilogy, available in audio for the first time.
A fascinating mix of autobiographical episodes and extraordinary Egyptian theology, Burroughs’ final novel is poignant and melancholic. Blending war films and pornography, and referencing Kafka and Mailer, The Western Lands confirms Burroughs’ status as one of America’s greatest writers. The final novel of the trilogy begun with Cities of the Red Night and The Place of Dead Roads is a Book of the Dead for the nuclear age, an astonishing, profound, and revealing meditation on morality, loneliness, life, and death.
... Read more