What do you think?
Rate this book
Voice of the Fish
'This book left me stunned. Breathtaking in its scope and generosity . . . We are in the midst of a transcendent talent.' Maaza Mengiste, author of the Booker Prize-shortlisted The Shadow King
'Rapturous . . . [Horn] is the mystic's David Attenborough.' New York Times Book Review
Lars Horn's Voice of the Fish, winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize, is a kaleidoscopic, hallucinatory memoir that explores the trans experience through meditations upon aquatic life and mythology, set against the backdrop of travels in Russia and a debilitating injury that left Horn temporarily unable to speak, read and write. In their adept hands, these poignant, allusive shards take shape as a unified short vignettes about fish, reliquaries and antiquities serve as interludes between - and subtle reflections upon - longer memories of their life, knitting together a sinuous, wave-like form that flows across the book.
Horn swims through a range of subjects; across marine history, theology, questions of the body and gender, sexuality, transmasculinity and illness. From their childhood modelling for their mother's art installations - immersed in a bath with dead squid; encased in a full-body plaster cast - to their travels before they were out as trans, these beguiling fragments are linked by a desire to interrogate the physical, and to identify the current beneath. Horn re-examines presumptions about the body, privileging instead ways of seeing and being that resist binaries, ways that falter, fracture, mutate. Sensuous and immersive, Voice of the Fish is a masterful and moving achievement.
'Rapturous . . . [Horn] is the mystic's David Attenborough.' New York Times Book Review
Lars Horn's Voice of the Fish, winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize, is a kaleidoscopic, hallucinatory memoir that explores the trans experience through meditations upon aquatic life and mythology, set against the backdrop of travels in Russia and a debilitating injury that left Horn temporarily unable to speak, read and write. In their adept hands, these poignant, allusive shards take shape as a unified short vignettes about fish, reliquaries and antiquities serve as interludes between - and subtle reflections upon - longer memories of their life, knitting together a sinuous, wave-like form that flows across the book.
Horn swims through a range of subjects; across marine history, theology, questions of the body and gender, sexuality, transmasculinity and illness. From their childhood modelling for their mother's art installations - immersed in a bath with dead squid; encased in a full-body plaster cast - to their travels before they were out as trans, these beguiling fragments are linked by a desire to interrogate the physical, and to identify the current beneath. Horn re-examines presumptions about the body, privileging instead ways of seeing and being that resist binaries, ways that falter, fracture, mutate. Sensuous and immersive, Voice of the Fish is a masterful and moving achievement.
247 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 15, 2022
About the author
Lars Horn
6 books37 followersLars Horn is a writer and translator working in literary and experimental non-fiction. Their first book, VOICE OF THE FISH, won the 2020 Graywolf Nonfiction Prize. The recipient of a Sewanee Writers’ Conference scholarship, Horn’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Kenyon Review, Write Across Canada: An Anthology of Emerging Writers, New Writing Scotland, Gutter Magazine, and elsewhere. They live in Miami with their wife, the writer Jaquira Díaz.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
No one has reviewed this book yet.