Naked Lunch
First published in Paris in 1959 and then in the United States in 1962, Naked Lunch is William S. Burroughs's best known novel and one of the defining works of the Beat generation. The book follows a junkie named William Lee through a loose series of routines and visions set in New York, Tangier, and the imagined city of Interzone. There is no conventional plot. Instead Burroughs uses the cut-up method and a barrage of black comedy and grotesque imagery to attack addiction, bureaucracy, sexual repression, and the systems that prey on people. The novel was the subject of a landmark obscenity trial and remains a touchstone for experimental fiction and for writers interested in language as a weapon.
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What you might want to know about Naked Lunch
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A fragmented, hallucinatory novel that follows a junkie named William Lee through Interzone, a nightmare city built from addiction and control.
Bourdain often named Burroughs as a writer he tried to emulate as a young man, citing Naked Lunch as the book that showed him what transgressive, outlaw prose could do on the page.
Not in a traditional sense. It reads as connected routines and visions rather than a linear story, which is part of what makes it so distinctive.
Naked Lunch was written by William S. Burroughs, published in 1959 by Grove Press.
Naked Lunch is 289 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Naked Lunch takes most readers 4 to 6 hours to finish.
Naked Lunch is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.