Queer

Set in Mexico City during the early 1950s, Queer follows William Lee's hopeless pursuit of desire from bar to bar in the American expatriate scene. As Lee breaks down, the trademark Burroughsian voice emerges, a maniacal mix of self-lacerating humor and the Ugly American at his ugliest.

Originally written in 1952 but not published until 1985, Queer is an enigma—both an unflinching autobiographical self-portrait and a coruscatingly political novel, Burroughs' only realist love story and a montage of comic-grotesque fantasies that paved the way for his masterpiece, Naked Lunch.

Edited from the original manuscripts and introduced by renowned Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris, Queer is a haunting tale of possession and exorcism, a key to the Burroughsian oeuvre, and a novel with a history of secrets.