The Western Lands.

BURROUGHS, William S.

$600.00

Item Number: 132374

New York: Viking, 1987.

First edition of the culminating book in the author’s Cities trilogy. Octavo, original half cloth, pictorial endpapers. Association copy, inscribed by the author on the half-title page in the year of publication, “For Richard Dillon all best for 1988 William S. Burroughs 10/20/87.” The recipient, Richard Dillon is a poet and astrologer, who was living in Boulder at the same time as Burroughs and became friendly with him, Alan Davies, Anne Waldman and other Naropa luminaries. Fine in a fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Neil Stuart. Jacket illustration by Deborah Pinkney. With a National Arts Club tour flyer featuring Burroughs as the headliner laid in.

The final book of the trilogy that begins with Cities of the Red Night (1981) and continues with The Place of Dead Roads (1983), The Western Lands takes its title from the western bank of the Nile River, which in Egyptian mythology is the Land of the Dead. Inspired by the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Burroughs explores the after-death state by means of dream scenarios, hallucinatory passages, talismanic magic, occultism, superstition, and his characteristic view of the nature of reality. Despite the narrative challenge of the historical framework, the novel is often regarded as Burroughs' best late work and a gratifying culminating episode of the Cities trilogy.