"Naked Lunch" was first published in Paris in 1959 and in America in 1962. The publishers were arrested due to its obscene content and the stock was seized by the authorities. Three years later, the famous trial of "Naked Lunch" followed and it was not until July 1966 that the Supreme Court of Massachusetts decided to allow the circulation of the book, a historic decision that marked the end of censorship in the USA, in the field of literature.

The book quickly became a legend and, along with Kerouac's "On the Road" and Ginsberg's "Howl," it now constitutes the "top trio" of Beat literature.

In 1991, the eponymous film by David Cronenberg was released, partly based on this novel but also on other works by Burroughs.

In 2005, Time magazine included "Naked Lunch" in its list of the 100 best novels written in English since 1923.

The axis of the book is the wild adventure of the drug addict William Lee, who escapes from New York and ends up in Tangier, in the damned "Interzone" of hallucinations, substances, and homosexual, orgiastic sex. Essentially, the book is a daring descent into the dark side of human nature, offering a harsh critique of Western, and mainly American, culture of metaphysical conservatism, violence, sexism, and political corruption - elements that today, more than ever, are evident in Western civilization.

The "Restored Text" of this edition is 20% larger in length than the original 1959 edition. It is published for the first time in Greek with the corrections of the two most famous Burroughs scholars, James Grauerholz and Barry Miles, and also includes in an appendix Burroughs' notes, various essays and introductions he wrote over time for his book, texts that were rejected for various reasons, as well as alternative drafts of the novel.