And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks

With an Afterword by

James Grauerholz



'The novel that kicked it all off'

Independent



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 Unpublished for years, And the Hippos . . . is a remarkable insight into the lives and literary development of two great writers.



'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



-----

Format: Paperback.