Desolation Angels - Softcover

"Kerouac ... defines the sensibilites of members of his own subgeneration: we knew them as wearing such guises as the Beat Generation, the Subterraneans, the Dharma Bums; now we see them as Desolation Angels, sadly pursuing their empty futilities..."
--Nelson Algren

"Each book by Kerouac is unique, a telepathic discord. Such rich natural writing is nonpareil in later 20th century, a synthesis of Proust, Celine, Thomas Wolfe, Hemingway, Genet, Thelonius Monk, Basho, Charlie Parker and Kerouac's own athletic sacred insight. Jack Kerouac was a 'writer' as his great peer William S. Burroughs says."
--Allen Ginsberg

Kerouac’s candid and definitive insider’s record of the key figures and events surrounding the Beat Generation, 'Desolation Angels' had gained a reputation as an underground classic long before publication in 1964. Told through the character of Kerouac’s fictional alter ego, Jack Duluoz, the novel follows the story of his last legendary road trip, accompanied by his thinly-disguised Beat counterparts, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and William Burroughs. From California to Mexico and on to opium-ridden Tangiers, Kerouac chronicles the frenetic parties, the drink and the drugs, the poetry and the mountain vigils with unsurpassable energy.

“One of the most true, comic and grizzly journeys in American literature.”
TIME

“The Beats drug, hop freight trains, live on the road and contemplate Buddha. A nerve-jangling, sometimes sentimental, always sincere and funny book.”
SUNDAY TIMES

“A beatific glow turns Ginsberg into a great poet, not a hairy rhymester selling his Vaseline jars as fake holly relics. Burroughs becomes an all-American folk hero, swinging and swaggering down the Calle Larache, rebuking his companions for walking too slow. All in a prose-poetry out of Whitman and Wolfe and Dylan Thomas.”
OBSERVER

“A rip-roaring, racing torrent of words.”
IRISH TIMES

Many of Kerouac’s works are available in Flamingo, including 'Big Sur, Doctor Sax' and 'Lonesome Traveler'.