The western lands - William S Burroughs

The Western Lands is William Burroughs' Book of the Dead, which draws upon ancient Egyptian mythology for its symbolic structure. It is an intricately interwoven novel, often picaresque, often episodic, sweeping through time from ancient Egypt to the medical riots of 1999, ranging from despairing apprehensions of modern reality to moments of bathos or high comedy. The Western Lands concludes Burroughs's spiritual odyssey, which began in Cities of the Red Night and continued in The Place of Dead Roads.

'The only living American writer of whom it seems to me one can say with confidence he will be read with the same shock of terror and pleasure in a hundred years' time' Angela Carter, Guardian