Sound Museum

(Paperback)

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Description

A combination of fiction and documentation, Sound Museum fearlessly interrogates state-sanctioned violence and the psychologyand banalityof evil.

In Iran, a curator has gathered foreign journalists for a VIP tour of her latest creation. As the guests wander her museum's halls, she shares the struggles she's faced in bringing together this exhibition of her professionespecially the gender inequity she's battled for her entire career.

But the Sound Museum is no ordinary institution. It is a museum of torture, wrought from the audio recordings pulled from interrogation rooms and prison cells. And the curatorher unbroken monologue drifting through archives, philosophy, and dreamsis only too happy to share her part in this globe-spanning industry.

With sensuous and lyrical prose, Sound Museum bears witness while calling into question the act of witnessing, drawing the reader into the uncomfortable position of confronting one womans psyche; evil, yet completely blind to her own depravity.

Reviews

Praise for Sound Museum

"Reading Poupeh Missaghis courageous Sound Museum is an astonishing experience of profound significance. It is magnificent." Rikki Ducornet, author of The Plotinus

Past Praise:

Praise for trans(re)lating house one

Library Journal, Best Debut Novels Fall/Winter 2019
The Millions, Most Anticipated 2020

trans(re)lating house one is an experimental hybrid work that combines a traditional novel narrative with quotes from theorists and writers, dossier-style notes on people who have been made to disappear after death, and poetry. The unnamed protagonists journey through Tehranits teahouses, gardens of private homes, and streetstakes the reader along on her quest. Ploughshares

Missaghi, a writer, translator, editor and teacher, uses a fragmented style, veering from journalism to magical realism, to tell a fragmented story that produces no answers, only questions: Will the trauma ever stop being inherited Will humans ever change The Millions

A haunting political cartography, trans(re)lating house one is an evocative hybrid novel about the struggle to map the scars of our dead and disappeared. Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author of Call Me Zebra

trans(re)lating house one resonates with recent masterworks about disappearance, such as Sara Uribes Antgona Gonzlez or Patricio Guzmns Nostalgia for the Light, where the search to find the disappeared becomes inseparable from how we understand the hemisphere, the nation, and even the universe itself. This is a rare and remarkable book. Daniel Borzutzky, National Book Award-winning author of The Performance of Becoming Human

Author Bio

Poupeh Missaghi is a creative writer, scholar, editor, and translator (between English and Persian). She is an assistant professor of Literary Arts and Studies at the English Department at the University of Denver. Her debut novel trans(re)lating house one was published in 2020 (Coffee House Press) and her translation of Nasim Marashis novel Ill Be Strong for You was published in 2021 (Astra House).