Writer, artist, activist of the Situationist International, junkie, revolutionary ... Alexander Trocchi is one of the most remarkable writers of the 50s and 60s, a prominent leader in the European avant-garde and cult figure after his untimely death in 1984 of an Italian father and Scottish mother, Trocchi studied philosophy at the University of Glasgow, and in 1940 moved to Paris, where he was a regular at the Latin Quarter nightlife settings. There he edited the literary magazine Merlin and, to survive, went on to write novels erotic or even pornographic cut he signed with a pseudonym. Much of this work was banned in Britain, France and the United States.

In late 1950 he left for New York, where his autobiographical novel The Book of Cain became a bestseller and Trocchi was recognized as one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation. During these years he began his experiments with drugs, becoming imprisoned briefly in New York. Both French existentialism as the Beat movement had a profound impact on almost all his work. Trocchi's novels deal with human isolation in a society marked by moral ambivalence and alienation.