The Place of Dead RoadsA controversial reworking of well trodden American myth by the author of Naked Lunch. This surreal fable, set in Americas Old West, features a cast of notorious characters: The Crying Gun, who breaks into tears at the sight of his opponent; The Priest, who goes into gunfights giving his adversaries the last rites; and The Nihilistic Kid himself, Kim Carson, who, with a succession of beautiful sidekicks, sets out to challenge the morality of small town

as seen by the journallists involved: and there is the enigmatic life of the woman libelled

Thrown amongst these loose cannons is a widowed beauty who practices "conspicuous polyandry

and as shells fall in Flanders

'Obregn is a bright

In the cramped west end of Sharakhai

a fascinating and complex protagonist set for many books to come

The skirmishes are far from glorious and operations often rough and bloody

That's how I learned I'd made a serious error in judgement and ended up risking my life

who appears to be a rival prospector and who's certainly a spy - how can they keep working without him discovering what they've found

and a disquieting appearance at a writers' conference in Amsterdam where she finds the subject of her talk unexpectedly amongst the audience

The time is now ripe for his commercial breakthrough

hard-worked destroyer and her company of men