Junk, known as
Smack in the U.S., is a
realistic novel for young adults by the British author
Melvin Burgess, published in
1996 by Andersen in the U.K. Set on the streets of
Bristol, England, it features two
runaway teens who join a group of
squatters, where they fall into
heroin addiction and embrace
anarchism. Both critically and commercially it is the best received of Burgess' novels. Yet it was unusually controversial at first, criticized negatively for its "how-to" aspect, or its dark realism, or its moral relativism.