The Dumb House

In Persian myth, it is said that Akbar the Great built a palace which he filled with newborns, attended only by mutes, in order to learn whether language is innate or aquired. As the children grew into their silent and difficult world, this palace became known as the Gang Mahal, or Dumb House. In his first novel, John Burnside explores the possibilities inherent in a modern-day repetition of Akbar`s investigations. The unnamed narrator creates a twisted variant of the Dumb House. When the children develop a musical language of their own, excluding their jailer, he extracts an appalling revenge.

John Burnside is the author of The Glister; Living Nowhere; Something Like Happy, which was the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year; A Summer of Drowning which was shortlisted for the Costa Prize; and Black Cat Bone, which won both the Forward Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry.