And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks

In alternating chapters that reveal a nascent period in their development as two of the twentieth century`s most influential writers, Beat Generation icons William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac`s And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks is an electrifying true-life mystery, including afterword by James Grauerholtz in Penguin Modern Classics. This is a hardboiled crime novel, and a true story. In 1944, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs, then still unknown writers, were both arrested following a murder: one of their friends had stabbed another and then come to them for advice - neither had told the police. Later they wrote this fictionalised account of that summer - of a group of friends in wartime New York, moving through each other`s apartments, drinking, necking, talking and taking drugs and haphazardly drifting towards a bloody crime. Unpublished for years, And the Hippos were Boiled in their Tanks is a remarkable insight into the lives and literary development of two great writers. If you enjoyed And the Hippos were Boiled in their Tanks, you might like Kerouac`s On the Road, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. `The novel that kicked it all off` Independent `An insight into Kerouac before he went on the road and Burroughs before his drug use spiralled out of control, this is a major literary event` GQ