Cities of the Red Night Lib/E: (1 Red Night Trilogy Lib/E)

From one of the founders of the beat generation and the 1960s counterculture comes this opening novel of a series available now in audio for the first time. 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 (1914-1997) was an American author, painter, and spoken-word performer who has had a wide-ranging influence on American culture. Jack Kerouac called him the "greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift." Norman Mailer declared him "the only American writer who may be conceivably possessed by genius." A postmodernist and a key figure of the beat generation, he focused his art on a relentless subversion of the moral, political, and economic conventions of modern American society, as reflected in his often darkly humorous and sardonic satire. He wrote eighteen novels and novellas, six short-story collections, and four collections of essays. No fewer than five books of his interviews and correspondence have been published. He also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians and made many appearances in films. He was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1983 and in the following year was appointed to the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. Ray Porter is an AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator and fifteen-year veteran of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He has appeared in numerous films and television shows, including Almost Famous, ER, and Frasier.

Review :
"Cities of the Red Night is not only Burroughs' best work but a logical and ripening extension of all of Burroughs' great work." -- "Ken Kesey, author of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest" "Cities of the Red Night is the most complete and most devastatingly sardonic statement of William Burroughs' apocalyptic vision. Through his mordant satire of cultural aspirations, homosexual eroticism, and political power, he focuses our gaze into the abyss. His cold, surgical language creates beauty through a terror that we are just able to bear...A modern Inferno." -- "Newsday (Long Island, NY)" "Cities of the Red Night is Burroughs' masterpiece. In it, the world ends with a bang--and a barely perceived whimper, disguised by the wicked smile of one of the most dazzling magicians of our time." -- "Los Angeles Times Book Review" "One should approach Cities of the Red Night as the Wagneresque capper of all the five or six homosexual planet-operas Burroughs has scripted since he found a genuine new style in Naked Lunch...It's as if we had gotten hold of a black ticket to his unconscious, and anyone who makes the trip will see sights and feel feelings that are unique and mind-bending beyond anyone else's description." -- "Washington Post Book World"