In 1945, two unknown and unpublished writers -- Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs -- collaborated on a novel based on a real-life New York murder committed by a friend.
Initially rejected by publishers, "And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks" finally is being released, many decades after Kerouac and Burroughs became founding fathers of the Beat Generation.
"It's no long-lost masterpiece," says James Grauerholz, its editor and executor for Burroughs, who died in 1997. "But it should appeal to fans of the works and lives of both writers."
By more than a decade, it predates the books that made its authors famous: Kerouac's "On the Road" in 1957 and Burroughs' "Naked Lunch" in 1959.
Its back story may be more interesting than the novel itself, which features alternating chapters by Burroughs and Kerouac, who died in 1969.
It was inspired by a sensational 1944 murder involving a friend of Kerouac and Burroughs: Lucien Carr, a promising 19-year-old freshman at Columbia University.
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