Savannah’s hustlers and high-rollers open their doors and their hearts to John Berendt in the international bestseller that gets its long-awaited Folio debut.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream
Illustrated by Ralph Steadman
Introduced by David Mamet
Hunter S. Thompson’s acid-laced counterculture classic, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, is given the ultimate collector’s makeover in this 50th anniversary Folio Society edition featuring Ralph Steadman’s original illustrations and an exclusive introduction by David Mamet.
£60.00
Product Gallery Thumbnails
‘The best book on the dope decade.’
- New York Times
With their rental car packed full of psychedelic drugs, Hunter S. Thompson and his attorney, the Samoan, embark on the greatest narcotics-fuelled road trip in journalistic history. Sent to cover the Mint 400 race in Las Vegas, the pair ditch the story to find the dark side of the American dream … while doped up on a heady cocktail of booze, pills and powder. As reality and fantasy are blurred beyond recognition, their chemical encounters with the city’s reprobates become increasingly weird and darkly comic. The 50th anniversary of publication is the backdrop for this collector’s edition and it is a psychedelic showcase of Thompson’s hallucinatory ‘memoir’. Every one of Ralph Steadman’s iconic and grotesquely compelling original illustrations has been carefully coloured by Neil Gower, with Steadman’s approval, while David Mamet’s exclusive new introduction completes this unique edition.
Bound in printed and blocked cloth
Set in Electra with Alternate Gothic as display
232 pages
26 full-colour illustrations integrated throughout the text,
including 5 double-page spreads
Metallic endpapers
Printed, soft-touch laminated slipcase
9½˝ x 6¼˝
‘We can't stop here, this is bat country!’
Originally published as a two-part story in Rolling Stone magazine, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was released in book form in 1972. For the first time, Ralph Steadman’s iconic magazine illustrations, plus his two Rolling Stone covers, are brought together in one edition. From the hideous, hallucinatory ‘lizard people’ to the jacked-up, doped-out, blitzed and psychotic snapshots of this drug binge, Steadman’s mesmerising and irreverent illustrations will always be synonymous with Thompson’s work. In his new and exclusive introduction for the edition, author, screenwriter and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet explores the history of pseudo-biographical journalism via Twain, Hemingway and Sterne, among others. His personal anecdotes and encyclopaedic knowledge are a rollercoaster ride around the genre, the pinnacle of which, in Mamet’s opinion, is Thompson’s ‘superb book’.
‘This is not a good town for psychedelic drugs. Reality itself is too twisted.’
Just as Che Guevara posters decorated student bedrooms in the seventies, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas filled their bookshelves. The literary symbol of the anti-American dream, Thompson’s chronicle of unashamed drug abuse and disregard for the status quo became a rebel call for a generation. His unique style of first-person reportage inspired ‘gonzo journalism’, and he joined a wave of reporters – Wolfe and Burroughs among them – who had blazed a trail by becoming active participants in their stories. Fear and Loathing took the style to the extreme and remains one of the greatest examples of the genre. Whether returning to the novel or enviably reading it for the first time, this unique 50th anniversary edition is the ultimate introduction to the greatest psychoactive literary trip through seventies American drug culture.
You May Also Like
-
-
A witty and melancholic portrayal of 1950s New York set against the backdrop of mental illness, Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar is newly introduced by Plath biographer and scholar, Heather Clark, and features seven ethereal illustrations by Alexandra Levasseur.
-
Choose Trainspotting, the explosive debut of author Irvine Welsh, as Folio celebrates the 30th anniversary of this cult classic with the first illustrated edition ever published.
-
Cormac McCarthy’s sparse and beautiful writing is perfectly mirrored by Gérard DuBois’s hauntingly understated images for this Folio Society edition of the Western thriller No Country for Old Men.