Synopses & Reviews
Expelled from Eden is a an eclectic introduction to William T. Vollmann, a writer of protean variety whom the
Los Angles Times has called "a monster, a monster of talent, ambition and accomplishment" and whom the
New Yorker named, in 1999, "one of the twenty best writers in America under forty." In his first book,
You Bright and Risen Angels, Vollmann evinced the ferocious curiosity and embattled compassion that is the hallmark of his novels and short stories.
As a journalist, Vollmann has been no less daring. He has interviewed opium warlords in Myanmar, rescued a child prostitute, bivouacked with Afghan rebels, and, in his prophetic essay in the New Yorker, reported on life under the Taliban. Through interviews and critical essays, and excerpts from Vollmann's books, journalism, essays, correspondence, and poetry, Expelled from Eden creates a unique, kaleidoscopic portrait of one of America's most important writers.
Review
"[I]ncluded are photographs and drawings, and, best of all, an extraordinarily revealing and witty chronology that creeps forward from the primordial era through the unfolding of civilization to Vollmann's globe-circling adventures and the fruits of his fertile and febrile imagination." Booklist
Review
"Vollmann's willingness to go against the preferred social realism of our day, enabled by his publishers' willingness to allow him to unfold his Wagnerian epics at full length, makes him a hero of our time." Washington Post
Synopsis
William T. Vollmann is one of our greatest living writers. Masterworks such as You Bright and Risen Angels, The Royal Family, and Rising Up and Rising Downhis latest work, a stunning 3,300-page tour-de-forcehave launched him into the literary stratosphere. He stands today as one of America's leading contenders for a future Nobel Prize in literature. Here is his long-awaited "best-of" collection, intended both as an introduction for the curious reader, and as a necessary addition to the existing fan's collection. With excerpts from all of Vollmann's novels (including several not yet published), journalistic pieces, essays, correspondence, and poetry, Expelled from Eden creates a unique, kaleidoscopic portrait of one of America's most notorious, protean, devastating, and necessary writers.
About the Author
William T. Vollmann is the author of seven novels, three collections of stories, and the seven-volume critique of violence, Rising Up and Rising Down. His most recent novel, Europe Central,/i>, won the National Book Award in 2005. He has also won the PEN Center USA West Award for Fiction, a Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize, and a Whiting Writers' Award. His journalism and fiction have been published in the New Yorker, Esquire, Spin, and Granta. Vollmann lives in Sacramento.