<p>More than sixty years ago William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac two novice writers at the dawn of their careers sat down to write a novel about the summer of 1944 when one of their friends killed another in a moment of brutal and tragic bloodshed. Alternating chapters they pieced together a hard-boiled tale of bohemian New York during World War II full of drugs and obsession art and violence. The manuscript named after a line from a news story about a fire at a circus was rejected by publishers and confined to a filing cabinet for decades. Now for the first time this legendary collaboration between two of the twentieth century’s most influential writers is being released. Both a fascinating piece of American literary history and an engrossing atmospheric novel it brings to life a shocking murder at the dawn of the Beat Generation.<p>