by Barry Miles  - 719 pages plus introductions, paperback

The original cult personality of the Beat Generation and a guru to sixties youth culture, William S. Burroughs has always been a controversial and mercurial figure.  No one since Burroughs has taken such literary risks, developed such individual political ideals or produced such diverse work

Drawing on countless interviews with Allen Ginsberg, Lucien Carr, and Burroughs himself, Barry Miles presents the first full length biography of Burroughs to chronicle the last turbulent decade of his life. He follows Burroughs from his Midwestern origins to the pre-war Harvard gay scene, the communal living that gave birth to the Beats at Columbia University, the expatriate culture in Mexico, Peru and Tangier - all the while struggling to battle and balance addiction.

"A book of a million wows... one of the most gratifyingly, sickeningly detailed biographies I have ever read