10 Strangest Fictitious Countries

You likely don't want to wind up in Annexia, based on what we know, which isn't much. From the drug-addled brain of William S. Burroughs, Annexia is a nation inspired by the Soviet Union that runs shady operations with names like "Total Demoralizer". It's either in or near a region known as the Interzone. And if you add David Cronenberg into the warped mythos, you also have to literally kill your darlings to gain admittance.

The reason information about Annexia is scant or vague is because it isn't a fully realized idea. A lot of Naked Lunch isn't, nor was it meant to be. Scenes may as well shift mid-sentence.

There were plenty of attempts to adapt Naked Lunch, including some by people who actually knew Burroughs, but Cronenberg's film is the closest we'll get to a linear story out of a very stubbornly non-linear novel.

Cronenberg's Lunch mixes autobiographical facts from Burroughs' life and mixes them with key vignettes and themes within the novel, the most significant being the accidental death of Burroughs' wife. In a drunken attempt to re-enact William Tell shooting an apple off someone's head, Burroughs hit Joan Vollmer instead.

In the film, Annexia represents Burrough's final acceptance. After running from goons and thugs in Interzone, being guided by giant talking bugs that transform out of typewriters and inhaling a lot of bug repellent, he finally has to again re-enact the William Tell incident.

Only then is he welcomed to Annexia as a writer.