Stars and Bars

illiam T. Vollmann writes in sheets of sound, creating psychosexual, historical, and theological narratives that can test patience but reward endurance. Surely the only contemporary novelist to reveal himself as a Unabomber suspect, the Sacramento-based author has had a compulsively prolific career encompassing everything from (1992), in which he recounts when he sought to join the mujahideen’s fight against the Soviets, to the 2005 novel , which won a National Book Award for