The Soundscape of Jakob Wegelius's The Murderer's Ape

Abstract

The article examines the relations between place, space and sound in the Swedish crossover novel The Murderer's Ape (2017 [2014]) by Jakob Wegelius. The novel is marked by its aesthetic and geographical richness and can be characterized as an adventure and detective novel where different sounds—and absence of sounds—are vital in the depiction of place. Departing from the field of literary geography, we map and analyze the novel's soundscape, i.e. the sonic environment in and the auditory experience of the text and discuss in which ways sound contributes to the novel's sense of place and how the reader is invited to construct storyworlds. Based on the sound analysis of The Murderer's Ape, we suggest five types of place-making sounds: sounds of orientation and suspense, projective sounds, plot-making places and their sounds, culture specific places and their sounds, and music sounds as, what we have termed, audiotopes. The article contributes to scholarship on Wegelius with an aesthetic oriented reading. Furthermore, by tuning in to the aural aspects of place we seek to provide a beginning framework for exploring soundscapes in narratives of children's literature.