William Burroughs' Blade Runner (A Movie) Finally Translated into French

Éditions Tristram has published the first French translation of William Burroughs' Blade Runner (A Movie), originally released in 1979 by Blue Wind Press in Berkeley. The book, translated by Bernard Sigaud, is not a screenplay but a novel structured as a single continuous shot, using cut-up techniques. Set in a dystopian New York spanning 1914, 1984, and 2014, the narrative depicts a world ravaged by disease, addiction, and social collapse. Burroughs introduces 'blade runners'—adolescent couriers who transport medical supplies for an underground healthcare system. The author, born in Missouri in 1914 and died in 1997, was a Beat Generation icon, known for Naked Lunch and The Wild Boys. He accidentally killed his wife Joan Vollmer in Mexico City in 1951, lived at the Beat Hotel in Paris, and was admired by Jean-Michel Basquiat. The book's title inspired Ridley Scott's 1982 film Blade Runner, though the two works are unrelated.