Rob Vollmar

Rob Vollmar is WLT’s book review and online editor. He is currently researching sustainability in the industrial food system while pursuing a master’s degree in integrated studies at the University of Oklahoma.

The Wild Boy by Paolo Cognetti

Autumn 2019
Rob Vollmar

Paolo Cognetti The Wild Boy Trans. Erica Segre & Simon Carnell Washington Square Press / Atria FEELING A BIT overburdened by the demands of civilized life but la...
Shouting for Less: A Conversation with David Holmgren

Summer 2019
Rob Vollmar

Photo: Bruce Hedge David Holmgren is an environmental designer, writer, and co-creator of the permaculture concept, which uses systems theory to create by design the resiliency found in na...
Hummingbirds Between the Pages by Chris Arthur

September 2018
Rob Vollmar

Hummingbirds Between the Pages Chris Arthur Ohio State University Press (2018) Chris Arthur’s most recent collection of essays, Hummingbirds Between the Pages, makes a compelling argument on...
Compass, by Mathias Énard

January 2018
Rob Vollmar

Compass Mathias Énard Trans. Charlotte Mandell New Directions, 2017 At the very time one should be looking ahead to the excellent works in transl...
The Exquisite Sounds of Silence

November 2017
Rob Vollmar

Photo: Claire Huteau (2017) Meïkhâneh La Silencieuse Buda Music La Silencieuse is the second album by Meïkhâneh, a musically expansive trio from Rennes, France, that brin...
Thirteen Ways of Listening to a Blackbird

September 2017
Rob Vollmar

Photo: Andrew Cagle Hello Psychaleppo Toyour Hello Psychaleppo’s third release, Toyour, draws inspiration from a wide variety of sources, some musical, some literary, and all celeb...
Dorchester

September 2017
Rob Vollmar

Thomas Hardy’s home, Max Gate, sits at the east end of Dorchester. Photo: Michael Day There are few British authors for whom place played a more important role in their work than Thomas Hardy. By all...
Absenting the Self: Charlotte Mandell on Translating Mathias Énard

July 18, 2017 | Rob Vollmar

Mathias Énard’s Compass (New Directions, 2017) is not only a love letter to the field of orientalism but, more broadly, to the power of the written word itself, especially in translation. I...
The Needle Always Points East in Mathias Énard’s Compass

June 28, 2017 | Rob Vollmar

Mathias Énard / Photo © Marc Melki / Courtesy of New Directions The quickest way to turn someone off from the possibility of reading Mathias Énard’s astounding novel, Compass (New Directions...
Rob Vollmar’s Summer Reads

May 2017
Rob Vollmar

With a wealth of fiction, nonfiction, and verse stacking up in his office, Book Review Editor Rob Vollmar has narrowed his reading ambitions for the summer down to these three worthy titles....
The Audacity of Peace

May 2017
Rob Vollmar

Rahim AlHaj Letters from Iraq: Oud and String Quintet Smithsonian Folkways Iraqi-born composer Rahim AlHaj’s latest album, Letters from Iraq, is his most ambitious to date. AlHaj...
Dreams of a Plastic Future

March 2017
Rob Vollmar

OY Space Diaspora Crammed Discs This issue’s special section on climate dystopias set me wondering what kind of responses to an uncertain future dwell in the world music community. One...
“The interior of the human head is infinite”: A Conversation with Alan Moore

January 18, 2017 | Rob Vollmar

Google Deep Dream illustration by David Futrelle. Due to space constraints, the following excerpts from our Alan Moore interview in the January issue had to be cut. That interv...
Dressing the Tongue: The Spoken-Word Albums of Alan Moore

January 2017
Rob Vollmar

In addition to his better-known work as a writer of comics and novels, Alan Moore has built a considerable body of spoken-word albums, most created in conjunction with a collective known as Moon and S...
Northampton Calling: A Conversation with Alan Moore

January 2017
Rob Vollmar

Alan Moore. Photo: Joe Brown Alan Moore is the most celebrated comics writer living but doesn’t write comics anymore. For the past decade, he’s been working instead on his second novel, Jerusalem...
Something Old, Something New

January 2017
Rob Vollmar

Beats Antique Shadowbox Antique American composer Henry Cowell traveled to a variety of countries in the 1950s on behalf of the State Department, building bridges between cultures conside...
The Bible for Unbelievers: The Beginning: Genesis by Guus Kuijer

September 2016
Rob Vollmar

Guus Kuijer The Bible for Unbelievers: The Beginning: Genesis Trans. Laura Watkinson Seven Stories Press, 2016 The Bible has occupied a central position in Western culture sin...
A Mediterranean Blend

September 2016
Rob Vollmar

Tajaliyatt Afoforo Music Club Tajaliyatt is the second album from the ambitious Achref Chargui Trio. Composed of the aforementioned Chargui, a Tunisian oud playe...
Rob Vollmar’s Summer Reads

May 2016
Rob Vollmar

With a toddler to parent, WLT’s book review editor, Rob Vollmar, isn’t anticipating being able to go much of anywhere this summer, so he’s relying on his summer reads to take...
1,001 Riffs

May 2016
Rob Vollmar

Ibrahim Maalouf Kalthoum Impulse! “Umm Kalthoum is the quintessential Arab,” Uncle Jihad said. “She’s probably the one person whom all Arabs can agree to love . . .”—Rabih A...
Cross-Cultural Musical Collaborations

February 25, 2016 | Rob Vollmar

Norah Jones and Anoushka Shankar. In the March/April 2016 Global Frequency column, we took a listen to Musique de Nuit, a collaboration between French cellist Vincent Segal and Malian kora p...
Proximate Pairings

March 2016
Rob Vollmar

Vincent Segal & Ballaké Sissoko Musique de Nuit Six Degrees Now that a representative sample of the world’s recorded music is available at no greater cost than an hour’s worth of drill-do...
A Second Reunion

January 2016
Rob Vollmar

Amjad Ali Khan and Rahim AlHaj The sarod is an instrument used in North Indian classical music whose origin is shrouded in mystery and no small amount of controversy. What is not in dispute is Amjad...
World Music: “A Brief History of Tango,” by Rob Vollmar

November 2015
Rob Vollmar

From the opening ascending arpeggio of “Taquito Militar,” the thoughtful interplay between guitarist Berta Rojas and Argentina’s most beloved chamber group, Camerata Bariloche, takes center stage on...
Beyond Alif

September 8, 2015 | Rob Vollmar

Alif. Photo by Tony Elieh. To celebrate the release of Alif’s Aynama-Rtama (reviewed in WLT’s inaugural World Music column here), we’ve put together a short but substantive playli...