Rob Vollmar
-
May 24, 2021 |
Background image: typescript of “The Tulsa Race Riot and Three of Its Victims,” by B. C Franklin / Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift from... -
February 3, 2021 |
Photo by Quinn Dombrowski / Flickr The Gospel According to H. L. Hix (Broadstone Books, 2020) is an audacious book that foregrounds translation as a means of critiquing our understa... -
NICK KARY’S MATERIAL (Chelsea Green, 2020) uses the narrative tools of the psychogeographer to map the flows from human needs to the natural environment as resources... -
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... -
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 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 Mathias Énard Trans. Charlotte Mandell New Directions, 2017 At the very time one should be looking ahead to the excellent works in transl... -
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... -
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... -
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... -
July 18, 2017 |
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... -
June 28, 2017 |
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... -
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.... -
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... -
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... -
January 18, 2017 |
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... -
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... -
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... -
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... -
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... -
Tajaliyatt Afoforo Music Club Tajaliyatt is the second album from the ambitious Achref Chargui Trio. Composed of the aforementioned Chargui, a Tunisian oud playe... -
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... -
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... -
February 25, 2016 |
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... -
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...
