Sound Museum

by Poupeh Missaghi

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 evil, yet completely blind to her own depravity.

Genres: Fiction, Horror, Book Club, Novella, Literature, Contemporary

126 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 22, 2024

Reviews

[sophie]

oh this was so good. SO many layers to everything the narrator is saying and quoting, down to what names she remembers and which she doesn’t. her brand of hollow fascist feminism was so real and haunting. some academics straight up sound like this and will never stop to examine the systems they’re propping up because the system serves their interests. i really really loved the dream the narrator recounts (yikes girl!) and the reoccurring theme of telling the journalists their work matters but no it doesn’t, because only the “truth” as determined by the narrator matters, and you wouldn’t want your families to get hurt as a result of your actions, would you? just so good, political satire can be so good and powerful when done well and this is pretty perfect

[Kia ✩ ༄.° (insane reading slump)]

Sound Museum is a (fictional) transcript of an opening speech for a museum about torture and sound. It's an interesting text about politics, morality and ideology. Not quite what I expected, but enjoyable and thought-provoking in multiple ways.
I do however think that "Horror" is the wrong genre for it.

[Hana Carolina]

I downloaded a copy of this novella from Edelweiss in exchange for my honest review. For context, this work appeared for me once I filtered for fiction/horror, and I initially approached the book with this classification in mind. However, this is a literary work threading the line between fiction and non-fiction and I did try to adjust my point of view accordingly. I’m not sure if I succeeded and, in the end, the genre categorisation of this piece left me puzzled.

Sound Museum promises to explore what happens once the lifeblood of liberals—art, philosophy, academic study, exhibition design—is used to benefit a repressive and cruel regime. The curator describes what amounts to an Iranian state-mandated torture art exhibit, which consists of the recordings of the voices of the victims, and some interactive displays which allow the audience to share in the feelings of culpability. We experience the cruelty of the system at multiple layers of removal; the story of a representation of the atrocities brings us as close to the horrors as a review of a painting of a restaurant would to a meal. The few and far between glimpses at the actual humans affected are the only emotional and vivid parts of the story, as is the narrator's sudden detour into a description of her dream. These moments are full of evocative images and speak to the imagination in ways in which a detached discussion of theory and philosophy, which makes up the bulk of this story, never can. This makes me question this choice of form, style, and focus.

Perhaps the shock should lie in evil using the language of academia. There are no surprises, however, as academic language is the perfect tool for intellectualisation and emotional detachment, a rhetorical device which can support any political ideology, which is precisely what it does in the novella—making familiar feminist arguments, decrying the genocide in Palestine and, in the same breath, defending the santicy of state-supported torture. However, detailed research and familiarity with relevant sources do not justify engagement in fiction as they do in academic writing. The value of that currency, as precious as it is, plummets when crossing the lines of genre. Some crude craft wisdom still applies and a fictional story does need to cover some basics to sustain interest—variations in pace, strong characterisation, emotional hooks and memorable scenes—all a borderline impossibility within the limitations of this chosen form, which reads exactly like an academic lecture, but lasts for over a 100 pages.

The story left me pondering over all the routes that weren’t taken and possibilities that weren’t explored. For the entirety of the story, I was tethered to the least interesting perspective in the room: the curator, the person whose vision of the museum is limited to the dogma she preaches. She speaks to a diverse group of journalists who, as she explains, come from a variety of countries, backgrounds and perspectives. This makes me curious about their motivations, their decision-making leading to the moment they entered the museum, and their responses to the exhibition—what unintended meanings and slippages would they notice and explore, what would they want to say, but would be unable to due to disclosure agreements. The curator also mentions running surveys, which would be a fascinating medium to explore this topic and to showcase the impact of this horrific work on a wide variety of people. However, we don’t get to experience the exhibit, let alone the reactions to it.

Overall, the execution of the concept left me underwhelmed, which is a great shame and wasted opportunity. However, the story did make me curious about the history of Iran and opened many avenues for further exploration, as a good lecture would. I’m quite entrenched in academia and familiar with the academic skill set, so perhaps it is harder to dazzle me. I also grew up in Poland, amongst stories of the holocaust, and I have seen such topics explored through many formal lenses - from the coldly historical, to the deep and personal, and all the way to pure propaganda. Perhaps that makes me a more difficult reader. I do hope there’s something I missed.

[Anna Muthalaly]

A unending, no paragraph breaks monologue structured as the vaguely academic speech an Iranian woman is giving a group of foreign journalists who are the first visitors to her pride and joy— the “sound museum”, an exhibit she has constructed of the screams, whimpers, thuds and more that come from the torture she and her fellow “interrogators” conduct in the name of the Iranian government

This, was such a unique reading experience— I’ve read other reviews that comment on the totalitarian nature of the text itself, with no easy places to stop or start, no chapters or paragraphs, so that you’re forced to just let the narrator’s diatribe steamroll over you.

It took me a while to realize everything she was discussing was “factual,” ie every academic she cites on the topic of torture or every Iranian dissident she discusses torturing are real people and things that I can and should Google. In fact, that’s how I ended up structuring my reading, plowing through and then taking breaks only when it was time to Google a new name or theory.

I was in a play at college that was loosely about the horrors the US committed in Abu Ghraib, so I was familiar with that aspect of tortures normalization in the West, but of course it was a completely new experience reading about torture from the “proud” perspective— ie, from a torturer who is eager to discuss the academic and moral sanctity of her work.

This book really stuck for me when, 2/3 of the way through the book, I watched a YouTube video on abu Ghraib and on tortured ineffectiveness as a whole. It really highlighted how fucking seductive this narrator is, how easy it is to use academia and modern thinking and the right nonsense words to justify literally anything

It’s eerie. I’m confused why this book was ever classified as horror but it’s certainly nauseating and mostly, highly educational on the theories of torture and on Iranian affairs. A completely unique experience, and one I’m glad I soldiered through

[Haultaine]

Hashtag girlboss the novella.

Of course a torturer is going to use Hobbesian arguments about how it’s just human nature and anyone given certain conditions could/would be a torturer.

If she didn’t do it, someone else would’ve, you know?

Anything for one’s great nation. All the world’s powers abuse their power so why shouldn’t we?

This is a very thought provoking satire. I dunno who to recommend it to, besides those willing to wallow in the mire of hypocrisy, those willing to consider where feminist/humanist arguments fall short. And for those who were disappointed that this didn’t go into more specifics regarding the actual torture, perhaps read Frantz Fanon’s Wretched Of The Earth, or the CIA’s handbook on torture.

[nadia]

Our feminist museum of torture<3 kind of fun i liked seeing the curators mind at work and i'll always be a fan of combining theory and fiction. All the language she used to describe dress up the museum to make it seem less evil was so familiar...well you know how it is.
This could be even better as a stage play maybe

[Eva]

3.75 ⭐️

[Marc Nash]

Video review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8ipv...

[Ali G]

The premise of this is amazing, but I think based on the description, I expected a different execution. I was expecting a more visceral experience of what it’s like going through a museum of torture. This reads like a lecture.

[Colin Gould]

Just start the tour already

[Sassy Sarah Reads]

5 stars

Sound Museum is a 113-page monologue without breath, pause, or paragraph break about a museum in Iran that is solely about torture and the use of sound. This was a chilling novella that is quite timely to read considering the current state of the world, but it is interesting and nuanced. The woman presenting the speech and introducing foreign diplomats to the museum is a feminist by her own admission, but wants to torture women of the opposing side into submission. She often proudly proclaims things publicly that should be kept secret, but feels such pride in being a director of an all-woman torture team and museum curator that she sees no fault in her stances.

I just recently received my master's degree in Literacy, Language, and Sociocultural Studies, so this is the antithesis of positive data and ethnographic and cultural research. This is research done to humiliate, obfuscate, abuse, isolate, and dehumanize in the name of assimilation or governmental retaliation. This is a chilling novella and not an easy read. The prose is dense, and no breathing room is given to the reader, but it is an effective note that ends with a sinking dread. We do not tour the Sound Museum, and that is the most terrifying thing about how this speech leaves off.

[Venneh]

This is basically what if one of the torturers in a repressive regime gave a TED talk about the amazing museum they made to try and improve torture in the future, and how proud they are of it. It's basically corporate girlboss feminism giving a completely demented talk, which is probably part of why I loved it so much. Very much a satire, but in a way that will absolutely make a bunch of white people cringe. Iranian author, picked this up from the library, absolutely worth your time.

[Charlie]

A bit too facetious of a conceit, over the course of the entire novella. Not that it’s overly long, but it hammers the sort of bemused tone of a museum curator pleased with themselves about the ingenuity of their collection and presentation, tied to the clear moral wrongness of their interest in torture methods, and that hammering eventually just turns to din. Would probably work better as a 30 page digression or side detail in a longer, more convoluted work.

[Alexander Pyles]

A disturbing and softly subversive read. Told in a stream of public speech, Missaghi manages to fold personal hubris, fatalistic nationalism, political religion, and the psychological narratives we tell ourselves every morning in order to silence our sins.

A work that demands attention, but will not be for it.

[Zuska]

Perhaps if A Modest Proposal, 1984, and all of Hannah Arendt’s oeuvre spliced their genomes to create an offspring, it would be something like this brilliant, terrifying little book.
A central message, that torturers are not monsters but are made from something that exists within all of us, is an important and not at all comforting truth.
Not an easy read but definitely worthwhile.

[Alex Glascock]

i only made it 30some pages into this book before buying a copy online. a gripping, nightmarish window into a satire not all that far from reality itself. absolutely fantastic narrative voice. as i know very little about iran's history, the gulf wars, and philosophy, this has given me an extensive reading list, after which i suspect i will be even more impressed with this novella.

[Isabella]

you will pry the NVLA series books from my cold dead hands

[Sierra]

thought-provoking, bravo
a dissection of the layers of evil and the evolving complexities of acts of said evil
poses a question of the evil humanity can achieve when given no limits

[Van]

A master class, so disturbingly delicious (or maybe deliciously disturbing?)

[Elvin]

Firstly - wow. The concept of this was a bit out there for me initially, and I was nervous picking it up that I might not like it. However, it’s handled so masterfully that even while you know that it’s a social commentary it’s subtle enough that you almost start to believe it’s real.

In the context of a West which has overlooked atrocity after atrocity, of a US in the era of immigration raids, political violence, and extremism that has become so normalized it’s become part of the fabric of a country, this book reads like a mirror held up to a world which has turned a blind eye to the equal humanity of its inhabitants.

I saw an interview the other day in which a US representative running for senate praised an ICE detention center for its “female leadership.” In light of this world in which we find ourselves, this book speaks so clearly to the depravity we will excuse in the name of progress, of “national security,” of western democracy.

“They don’t believe that we, their fellow countrymen and women, could in our natural state be as forceful as we are, which is sad, because we’re simply not being given enough credit.”

There’s a passage in here that is so startlingly concise in its ability to sum up both the US and Israeli ability to excuse torture, violence, and oppression. And, for the US, oppression that extends beyond Palestine and around the globe, country after country bombed and tortured in the name of “security.”

“Anyway, after emphasizing that he himself strongly condemned the human rights abuses against Palestinians, the scholar explained that many Israelis today do not really see themselves as forces of evil, because for them, evil and torture are what the Nazis did to them - well, to their ancestors, really - during the Holocaust, meaning the gas chambers and the camps, and anything short of that doesn’t count, doesn’t dent their consciences enough to disrupt their sleep or make them rise to fight for human rights.”

This idea of national security through violence and torture permeates the US’s political strategy. Missaghi is writing an ironic statement on the US using the Iranian regime, but she also speaks with a clarity on the US’s foreign policy that is all too apparent in this day and age.

“Consider the US’s position on this. Just change the rhetoric, call what you’re doing something else, pass laws about it, say it’s necessary for your national security, and you’re good to go. Even if activists and organizations speak out against you, no one can take any meaningful legal action to stop you… [and one could consider] US presidents and defense secretaries and military generals who, even using the faulty standards of international organizations such as the UN, could be labeled as war criminals, men and women whose violence affects not just a few individuals but entire nations - maybe we should call them super-torturers rather than, as they wish to be known, superpowers.”

Perhaps it has always been clear that international law is a farce. Perhaps it will always be a farce, a mere shadow, a rug pulled over the atrocities it refuses to seek justice for. I look back on the Japanese internment camps, on the Vietnam war (as Missaghi notes, “That first tribunal, held in 1966, was aimed at investigating the US foreign policy and military presence in Vietnam, but nice thing about it was it didn’t change anything about the actions the US was taking around the world, and I don’t believe the rulings were even acknowledged by the US government.”), and cannot find that the heart and would of the nation differ from the violence that pollutes the US culture today in its prisons, its detention centers, in the bombs dropped on Venezuela, and Iran, and those sold to Israel and other violent and oppressive states.

We are a nation of torturers. To be an “American” (a term which is lofty and oppressive in and of itself), is to participate, whether willingly or unwillingly, in this torture. It is to walk through streets that have become a museum of the sounds of human suffering and to close your ears and eyes to the humanity of your fellow man. This book speaks so clearly to what it would mean to be “proud” to be an “American.”

3.5 - only not a 4 because the wall of text made this a bit overwhelming and there were a few things I think suffered from the novella length.

[A]

Brilliant. First person female Iranian narrator delivers a monologue to an audience of foreign journalists. She is the head of a newly designed Sound Museum, which is an "innovative" way for visitors to interact with the Islamic Republic's practices of torture. "Our methodology," the narrator says, "is more akin to teaching arts than to hard sciences" (107). The book so unsettlingly shows the ways that feminist rhetoric (gender equity, patriarchal system, avoiding hierarchies, working as a collective, open horizontal approaches, agency, autonomy) and even pseudo-liberal corporate-academic rhetoric (user-friendly, holistic, content-warning) can be co-opted by forces that mainly want to consolidate their own power and grow their wealth, at the cost of human life, the environment, and their own humanity. Was shook by the part where the narrator recounts seeing bodies hanging from cranes as a child, and how she internalized this moment as one that showed the power she could have as an adult, were she to become a police officer, an agent of the state who could lawfully torture.
The intertextuality in this book is also incredible. missaghi's narrator references scholars, activists, artists, poets, journalists, singers, and films (Siah Armajani, Hayedeh, Tim Cokes, Forugh Farrokhzad, Eric Fair, Darius Rejali, Abbas Kowsari, Svetlana Alexievich Sharif Gemie, Leyla Mirghafari, Iraj Mesdaghi, Monireh Baradaran, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, The Report, etc...)

[Virginia Brackett]

The format of this quite original novella/monologue as one continuous paragraph at first annoyed me; I assumed it was a gimmick. But it well fits the message of this chilling work that presents an Iranian female narrator speaking to a group of world-wide journalists about her new Sound Museum. This particular museum features the sounds of torture to celebrate the methods employed by all-female torturers. Missaghi turns feminism into a tool of terror, using its various watch words of silencing, patriarchy, inequality, collaboration, and unification to celebrate destruction rather than the traditional construction of female worlds. She employs all the positives - art in its many forms, truth through journalism, science in the investigation of sound, use of many sources - to transform a message of horror into one acceptable to her audience. It's a brilliant imitation of the messaging used today by not only terrorists in order to "turn" innocents to their causes, but by politicians to convince constituents to invest in their ideology. I review it as a strong, sound, well-written, and frightening work.

[Winnie Y]

Has some quite fascinating look on the banality and psychology of evil ( the speaker is opening a museum highlighting torture through sounds recordings of prisoners and incorporating the architecture and science of prisons) in a sort of lecture style. The book touches upon various topics, including violence for so-called "honor and protection of a nation", gender inequity, the clash between culture/ideals of different countries when in contact, the science of sound and silence on people, current global events ( published in 2024, take a guess what events), and, well, the art and "humanity" behind the people torturing fellow humans for the sake of their countries.
Also kudos for having a lecture style while slowly building a sense of dread (I fear for the well-being of the international journalists and scientists who are the hypothetical audience in attendance at the end of this book).
I debated whether for 2 or 3 stars, as it is well written, but cannot say the subject is exactly my cup of tea. I enjoyed the science discussions on sound and the thinking exercise the book caused, so 3 it is.

[nicole]

fuuucking incredible satire. it's like minor detail meets the employees. not exactly traditional horror per-se, it's more of a stream of consciousness lit-horror (and even then defies its genre with theory and nonfiction asides) but oh my god it is so brilliantly well done. the scariest part is that our girlboss feminist museum of torture is that it is blatant and proud ("there's nothing anyone can do to stop us, or should i say, nothing anyone's willing to do") in its work, but it's ridiculously timely and covers not only zionism, the assad regime, trauma as entertainment, privacy threats, weaponized psychology, censorship, the intersection of fascism and feminism.. etc etc etc... and i feel like i've read some of these exact statements on twitter before in complete earnestness. our narrator is sooo self deluded but very smart. and it's scary how intellectuals can rationalize anything when given just the right framework to fit their beliefs into- and it's scary to understand how easy it would be to slip into that kind of belief system.

[Korey Ramírez]

I thought the premise was good and was curious about the execution. Was mostly disappointed in the delivery. It was such a cool concept to explore (the opening of a museum entirely based on the sounds of torture victims in Iran), but it did so much telling and so little showing. Which to me, is never an attribute of good art. Why would the author decide to deliver such a cool concept in the most boring way possible? Homegirl is essentially just ranting to the crowd. Maybe there was a subversive point to this, but it clearly wasn’t enough to not annoy the hell out of me. It’s clearly satire, sure, but how did it simultaneously manage to be so unfunny??

Obviously, there are important things she touches on; indoctrination, academia, performativity, state violence, torture and genocide, the banality of evil, etc. But mostly I couldn’t wait for it to be over.

[Annie Tate Cockrum]

A perfect satire. In the form of a museum welcome speech we hear from a curator about a new exhibition on human torture. Poupeh Missaghi’s writing is whip smart - she is able to perfectly capture an aestheticization of violence, and the related voyeurism. The curator we are hearing from in monologue form is dropping reference after reference, often admitting that she herself, hasn’t engaged with the texts at hand. The book is dark but at the same time funny in the way only a great satire can be.

[Maggie]

This book was not for me but I still couldn't put it down. 10 pages in I had a feeling the whole thing was a monologue then skipped ahead to check. I still went back and read the whole thing. Classifying this book as horror is pushing it since there isn't much detail about horrific events only hints really at interrogation and torture techniques. The only thing that really classified it as horror was the torture I put myself through sticking with it. I respect the art and read it in one sitting.

[Melissa Lenhardt]

It took me months to finish this book. It's a difficult read because of what it makes you think of; it distracts you in wondering how complicit you are as a citizen of a country who used torture for years, decades, and most likely still does. You unwrap yourself from your flag and try to come to terms with the idea, the knowledge, that there are people who have done the same as is detailed here, using your freedom as justification, and without your consent.

[Ruth Garcia-Corrales]

Sound Museum by Poupeh Missaghi presents a haunting and unsettling exploration of a fictional museum dedicated to the sounds of captive individuals, some recorded during torture, others in the silence of solitary confinement. The book repeatedly presents justifications for these acts, framing them as tools to preserve a regime and enforce a specific ideology. While the concept is bold and thought-provoking, it wasn’t my cup of tea.

[William Thompson]

Remarkable satire on atrocity tourism and our capacity to aestheticize violence. Grim, but funny. The novella is a sprightly perfectly voiced mad monologue delivered by the founder of a museum in Iran dedicated to sound recordings of torture. Full of disquieting moments and also points to real world books about torture (including by America) for further reading and disquiet.