William S. Burroughs’s novel Naked Lunch was first published in book form in 1959.
The Paris-based Olympia Press issued the novel, which uses fragmented episodes, shifting narrators, satire, and surreal imagery rather than a conventional plot. Burroughs had written much of the material earlier, and portions circulated in literary magazines before the complete book appeared.
Naked Lunch became one of the central prose works associated with the Beat Generation. Its publication history can be confusing because excerpts appeared before the book, and the American edition followed later. Grove Press published the first American edition in 1962 after a major obscenity case.
Another frequent mix-up concerns the title’s punctuation and capitalization. The novel is generally styled Naked Lunch, although early editions and references sometimes vary. The book should also not be confused with Burroughs’s earlier novel Junkie, which appeared in 1953 under the name William Lee.