Nova Express

by William S. Burroughs

Overview

The Soft Machine introduced us to the conditions of a universe where endemic lusts of the mind and body pray upon men, hook them, and turn them into beasts. Nova Express takes William S. Burroughs’s nightmarish futuristic tale one step further. The diabolical Nova Criminals—Sammy The Butcher, Green Tony, Iron Claws, The Brown Artist, Jacky Blue Note, Izzy The Push, to name only a few—have gained control and plan on wreaking untold destruction. It’s up to Inspector Lee of the Nova Police to attack and dismantle the word and imagery machine of these “control addicts” before it’s too late. This surrealist novel is part sci-fi, part Swiftian parody, and always pure Burroughs.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802197221
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	02/24/2011
Series:	Burroughs, William S.
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

William S. Burroughs (1914-1997) was the author of numerous novels, including Junky, Queer Naked Lunch, Nova Express, The Ticket That Exploded, The Soft Machine, and The Wild Boys. He is considered one of the twentieth century's most radical, innovative, and influential writers, and a founding member of the Beat Generation.

Date of Birth:

February 4, 1914

Date of Death:

August 2, 1997

Place of Birth:

St. Louis, Missouri

Place of Death:

Lawrence, Kansas

Education:

Los Alamos Ranch School; A.B., Harvard University, 1936; graduate study, 1938

Editorial Reviews

Hypnotic; I wish I could quote, but it takes several pages to get high on the stuff....Funny...outrageous along the lines of Burrough's well-established scatology. He can think of the wildest parodies of erotic exuberance and invent the weirdest places for demonstrating them.

Harpers

Burroughs writes with a beauty and efficiency unmatched by any living writer.

Chicago Sun-Times

Naked Lunch was a wild collage of every conceivable cathartic. Nova Express is more of the same....[It] is a sermon-blast of language....[Burroughs] is the Martin Luther of hipsterism, welding his decree onto the silicon doors of the solar system.

Newsweek

His attunement to contemporary language is probably unequalled in American writing.

Book Week

A sermon blast of language. . . . Burroughs is the Martin Luther of hipsterism, welding his decree on the silicon doors of the solar system.”—Newsweek

“Hypnotic . . . outrageous. [Burroughs] can think of the wildest parodies of erotic exuberance and invent the weirdest places for demonstrating them.” —Harper’s

“Burroughs is first and foremost a poet. His attunement to contemporary language is probably unequalled in American writing. Anyone with a feeling for English phrase at its most balanced, concise, and arresting, cannot fail to see this excellence.”—Terry Southern

“Burroughs writes with a beauty and efficiency unmatched by any living writer.”—Chicago Sun-Times

“Macabre, funny, reverberant, grotesque.”—The New York Review of Books

From the Publisher