SOUND MUSEUM

A curator explains the origins of a museum dedicated to torture.

Structured as the opening address at a press preview for the titular museum, Missaghi’s novel takes a chilling look at repressive regimes and the people complicit in their atrocities. The narrator is up front about her time spent as “an interrogator and torturer” and eventually reveals that the museum is intended to be “an educational center through which we can pass on our knowledge and achievements.” Given the Iranian setting, the actions of its government loom large, but so does the U.S. government’s use of torture, especially in the 21st century. “I’m aware that when it comes to torture, each country, era, situation, and even type of prisoner demands its own set of rules and regulations,” the narrator says — and what follows is an unsettling tour of historical atrocities, as well as the theorists who have tried to understand them. (Tonally, it’s pitched somewhere between Ali Smith’s Artful and Roberto Bolaño’s By Night in Chile.) The narrator’s speech abounds with allusions to writers and artists, including Siah Armajani, Tony Cokes, Pauline Oliveros, Hannah Arendt and Darius Rejali. But the most unsettling segment comes when the narrator speaks of Narges Mohammadi, an activist who is currently imprisoned by the Iranian regime. “Part of me also enjoys the constant battle between us,” the narrator says, and between this and her discussion of working to make torture a more equitable place when it comes to gender, there’s a haunting specificity to her approach. As much as readers might squirm as the narrator uses works opposed to torture to justify torture, the overall effect is one of a horror in which everyone is complicit.

A taut, searing tour of modern atrocities.