Cities of the Red Night (1981) by William S. Burroughs is a feverish, anarchic odyssey that defies genre, blending queer pulp adventure, apocalyptic satire, and occult mythology. The first installment of Burroughs’ Red Night Trilogy, the novel fractures into multiple narratives: an 18th-century pirate utopia where renegades establish a libertine colony free from laws; a seedy modern-day detective story following private eye Clem Snide as he investigates a sinister cult; and a hallucinatory future where a viral “Red Night” mutation unravels the fabric of reality itself.
Written in Burroughs’ signature cut-up style, the prose lurches between visceral grotesquery (sodomy rituals, interplanetary warfare) and biting social critique, targeting religion, capitalism, and the very structure of language as tools of control. The titular “Red Night” serves as both literal plague—a blood-red sky heralding chaos—and metaphor for revolutionary upheaval. Burroughs stitches together these disparate threads with dark humor and surreal grandeur, imagining a world where freedom is both erotic and destructive.
A chaotic, visionary work, Cities of the Red Night reads like a collaboration between the Marquis de Sade and Philip K. Dick—a delirious manifesto for those who dare to dismantle the machinery of power.
