'The dingy stairwells, the stinking chiottes, the stark rooms with their naked bulbs and sagging beds, come to life and make you long for a night in a Latin Quarter fleapit, au caractere traditionnel' Times Literary Supplement
 
The Beat Hotel was home to a host of key figures of the Beat generation in the late 1950s and 60s. It was also a hive of unbridled creativity, literary experimentation and drug-crazed extremity: Allen Ginsberg's Howl went on trial for obscenity; William Burroughs was inspired to finish Naked Lunch; the cut-up novel was born; Ginsberg and Corso collided with Duchamp, Celine and Man Ray; and Burroughs was nearly arrested for dealing heroin.
 
Barry Miles, who knew many of the Beats, draws his material from diaries, letters and original interviews. This is the first detailed account of a defining time and place for some of the twentieth century's most daring and notorious authors.
 
'An entertaining overview of the period' Time Out'
 
A savvy and intimate portrait of the Beats during their most prolific and creatively adventurous period... [written in] prose that is warm, lucid and alive to its subject.' San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
 
'Insightful... a breezy and readable account' Scotland on Sunday