Which Beat writer authored the novel The Western Lands?

William S. Burroughs authored the novel The Western Lands.

Published in 1987, The Western Lands was the final novel in Burroughs’s so-called Red Night trilogy. It follows Cities of the Red Night, published in 1981, and The Place of Dead Roads, published in 1983.

The book combines myth, historical material, speculative imagery, and Burroughs’s interest in altered narrative structures. Its title alludes to an ancient Egyptian conception of the afterlife, while the novel’s episodes move across different times, places, and symbolic worlds.

Burroughs is best known for Naked Lunch and for his cut-up techniques, but The Western Lands belongs to his later fiction. It should not be confused with The Western Lands, a nonfiction travel or history book; the title identifies a novel by Burroughs.