Who wrote the Beat Generation novel Naked Lunch?

William S. Burroughs wrote the Beat Generation novel Naked Lunch.

Burroughs’s novel was first published in Paris in 1959 by Olympia Press. An American edition followed in 1962 from Grove Press, with an introduction by Allen Ginsberg and a glossary prepared by James Grauerholz for a later edition.

Naked Lunch uses a fragmented, non-linear structure and incorporates Burroughs’s interest in the cut-up technique, in which existing texts are rearranged to produce unexpected combinations. Its subject matter includes addiction, power, surveillance, and bodily transformation.

The book became the focus of obscenity proceedings in the United States. In 1966, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that it was not obscene, helping establish stronger legal protection for literary works with challenging subject matter.