The Soft Machine
  • Published: 23 July 2014
  • ISBN: 9780141189789
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $24.99

The Soft Machine

The Restored Text

Formats & editions
EBook
22 Apr 2014
Paperback
23 Jul 2014
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For the first time in Penguin Modern Classics, the first novel in Burroughs' prophetic and revolutionary 'cut-up trilogy', now in a newly restored edition

With a dangerous blend of chemistry and magic, secret agent Lee has the ability to change bodies - his own, or with anyone he chooses. Also able to time travel, he finds himself forced to use his skills to defeat a team of priests, who are using mind control to produce their own private slave race. Dead soldiers, African street urchins, evil doctors, corrupt judges and monsters from the mythology of history and science all feature in Lee's terrifying adventure.

A surreal space odyssey, The Soft Machine is the first book in Burrough's innovative 'cut-up' trilogy - followed by Nova Express and The Ticket That Exploded - and a ferocious assault on hype, poverty, war and addiction in all its forms.
  • Published: 23 July 2014
  • ISBN: 9780141189789
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $24.99
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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.

Also by William S Burroughs

Queer
Junky: Popular Penguins
Naked Lunch
The Finger
The Place of Dead Roads
The Ticket That Exploded
And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks
See all
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