An opium addict gets lost in the jungle; young men wage war against an empire of mutants; a handsome young pirate faces execution; and the world is ravaged by a radioactive epidemic. These stories intertwine into a single narrative of turmoil and chaos. In the first novel of the trilogy, which continues in "The Place of Dead Roads" and "The Western Lands," William Burroughs delivers a sharp satire of modern society in a poetic and shocking tale of sex, drugs, disease, and adventure.