Sound Museum

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

In Iran, a curator has gathered foreign journalists for a VIP tour of her latest creation. As the guests sit to listen to her initial remarks, she shares the struggles she’s faced in bringing together this exhibition--especially 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 curator--her unbroken monologue drifting through fieldwork examples, case studies, archives, philosophy, and dreams--is 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, underlining complicities in systems of power and drawing the reader into the uncomfortable position of confronting one woman’s psyche: evil, yet completely blind to her own depravity.

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 Marashi’s novel I’ll Be Strong for You was published in 2021 (Astra House).