William S.Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch, Junkie and other underground classics, is an odd and central literary figure. He has been in every sense an outlaw. He spent time in jail, he shot and killed his wife and he was a drug addict forced to spend much of his life in exile from the United States, often on the run. He flaunted his homosexuality at a time when homosexuality was a criminal offence. From his upbringing in a middle-class St Louis suburb, his life has been counter-cultural.