Hustler-addict Bill Lee travels from New York to Tangiers, running from the police and searching for a place to take drugs, until he enters the hallucinatory fantasy world of Interzone, where individual freedom confronts the forces of totalitarianism.

Naked Lunch was Burroughs first venture into a nonlinear style. Scenes are slid together with little care for narrative and the book could be cut into at any point. Although not considered science fiction, "Naked Lunch" does seem to forecast AIDS, liposuction, and the crack pandemic.

As for Burroughs himself, Jack Kerouac called him the "greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift", J. G. Ballard considered him to be "the most important writer to emerge since the Second World War", while Norman Mailer declared him "the only American writer who may be conceivably possessed by genius".