Book one in Burroughs' surreal, anarchic 'Cut-Up Trilogy'. Hanged soldiers, North African street urchins, addicted narcotics agents, Spanish rent boys, evil doctors, corrupt judges and monsters from the mythology of history or the laboratories of science -- Burroughs is truly the Hieronymous Bosch of our time. In this surreal, savage and brilliantly funny novel, Burroughs' famous 'cut-up' technique, the slicing and random folding in of words, was fully developed, transforming the narrative into an extraordinary, unequalled new form of prose poetry.