Hailed by Newsday as "the most unconventional--and possibly the most exciting an
d imaginative--novelist at work today," William T. Vollmann has also established
himself as an intrepid journalist willing to go to the hottest spots on the pla
net. Here he draws on these formidable talents to create a web of fifty-three in
terconnected tales, what he calls ?a piecemeal atlas of the world I think in.?
Set in locales from Phnom Penh to Sarajevo, Mogadishu to New York, and provocati
vely combining autobiography with invention, fantasy with reportage, these stori
es examine poverty, violence, and loss even as they celebrate the beauty of land
scape, the thrill of the alien, the infinitely precious pain of love. The Atlas
brings to life a fascinating array of human beings: an old Inuit walrus-hunter,
urban aborigines in Sydney, a crack-addicted prostitute, and even Vollmann himse
lf.
