Books such as Naked Lunch have established William S. Burroughs (1914- 1997) as an iconic figure of the Beat generation. In William S. Burroughs Phil Baker investigates this cult writer’s life and work, and his self-portrayal as an explorer of inner space, reporting back from the frontiers of experience. Burroughs’s theories on dreams and subjective time travel are explored, as well as his visions of drug states as places and a Gnostic liberation beyond time and existence.