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  • Published: 25 March 2015
  • ISBN: 9780141189796
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $22.99

The Place of Dead Roads




Sci-fi meets the Old West in this obscene and hilarious novel from Naked Lunch author and Beat icon William S. Burroughs

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 Carson, 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 William 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.

  • Published: 25 March 2015
  • ISBN: 9780141189796
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $22.99

About the author

William S Burroughs

William S. Burroughs was born in 1914. His first published novel was the largely autobiographical Junky, which remains a classic depiction of the constant cycle of drug dependency, cures and relapses he was victim to for most of his life. In 1951, in a drunken William Tell stunt, he accidentally shot and killed his common-law wife. He is most famous for his use of the 'cut-up' technique of writing and the novel Naked Lunch. His other major works included Queer, Exterminator! The 'Nova Trilogy' (The Soft Machine, Nova Express and The Ticket That Exploded) and the 'Red Night Trilogy' (Cities of the Red Night, The Place of Dead Roads and The Western Lands). He died in 1997.

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