Fifty years ago Norman Mailer asserted, "William Burroughs is the only American novelist living today who may conceivably be possessed by genius." Few since have taken such literary risks, developed such individual ideas, or spanned such a wide range of media. Burroughs was the original cult figure of the beat movement, and with the publication of his novel Naked Lunch, he became a guru to the 60s youth counterculture. Here biographer and beat historian Barry Miles presents the first full-length biography of Burroughs to be published in a quarter centuryand the first one to chronicle the last decade of Burroughs' life and examine his long-term cultural legacy.