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Product Description
Product Description
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.
About the Author
William S. Burroughs was born on February 5, 1914 in St Louis. In work and in life Burroughs expressed a lifelong subversion of the morality, politics and economics of modern America. To escape those conditions, and in particular his treatment as a homosexual and a drug-user, Burroughs left his homeland in 1950, and soon after began writing. By the time of his death he was widely recognised as one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the twentieth century. His numerous books include Naked Lunch, Junky, Queer, Nova Express, Interzone, The Wild Boys, The Ticket That Exploded and The Soft Machine. After living in Mexico City, Tangier, Paris, and London, Burroughs finally returned to America in 1974. He died in 1997.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
20 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
"Cities" affords a logical conclusion to the various literary techniques and experiments employed by Burroughs over three prolific if somewhat confused decades of work. The straight forward narrative style of his debut novel "Junky" is thankfully reinvented peppered with a Chandler type detective story which sets the early theme of the book. This overlaps a pirate story based on the apparently factual adventures of Captain Mission and his colony of Libertatians. The book develops to suggest an alternative history that satirises the present in the same way as the outrageous comical routines of "Naked Lunch" attacked the America status quo. All the usual Burroughs themes are here, drugs, weapons, disease, virus control, hangings and gay porn. However, sparingly employing his controversial cut-up techniques interwoven with his various other writing styles Burroughs creates a prose, almost poetic in every line pulling together his masterpiece.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
As in all of Burroughs work there are several seemingly unconnected strands in this text. However, Cities of the Red Night is perhaps the most linear and accessable of Burroughs novels, and as a result the trilogy of novels which it begins is probably the best way for the uninitiated to start to appreciate the work of one of the 20th centuries most original writers. Whether you enjoy a ripping yarn about Pirates, detectives and magic, or are interested in Burrough's sometimes somewhat obsure plague metaphors, this book opens a door to an alternate history and present that once accessed can never be forgotten.
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is by far my favourite of all Burroughs work, its much warmer and cleverer than much of his other work, Naked Lunch may be the most famous but it really doesnt hold together as well as this beautifully evocative and bizaare "prose" that haunts you long after the turning of the final cyclonic page of annihilation... this is a sculture of words to please the eye and is reptilianly divine in its ambience... this is a bad dream written down and will forever thrill you with its power...
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Sci-fi Detective Adventure Porn
After previously reading " The Western Lands" which marked a move away from the sex fantasy side of the authors nature into a more Egyptian magical realm,I thought I'd try this... Read more
Published 3 months ago by nicholas hargreaves
William Burroughs - Cities of the red night
A nightmare classic.
Unparalleled mastery of putting explosive imagery into words.
Nothing short of a masterpiece of 20th century literature.
Unparalleled mastery of putting explosive imagery into words.
Nothing short of a masterpiece of 20th century literature.
Published on 26 Feb 2010 by Schlangemensch
Re-writing all that you might not know
This novel proves once and for all that Burroughs could have been one of the ten or so greatest straight narrative writers of the C20th. Read more
Published on 22 July 2000
This book is rubbish.
Cities of The Red Night is confusing, boring and over complex. The book is complete waste of time and money. Don't bother !
Published on 13 April 1999
Homosexuality, drugs, anarchy..........
Do you still live in hope of a utopian society? Well, Burroughs has all the answers provided you can force an opium habit upon the entire population of the world and then either... Read more
Published on 11 Feb 1999
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