The Unnatural Acoustic Space of Das Haus: A “Three-Dimensional” Radio Play Adaptation of Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves’

Despite its status as a cult novel, adaptations of Mark Z. Danielewski’s novel House of Leaves (2000) have been rare. This is not surprising, considering that the book’s unusual form is intrinsically connected to its equally unusual content. The novel’s story concerns a film about a house whose dimensions defy the laws of physics. The novel continually highlights the impossibility of its own filmic adaptation. Many of the main characters underline that the film medium inherently falls short of representing the unnatural space that is at the heart of the story. One successful adaptation is Das Haus (2010), a German radio play version of the novel that presents the story of House of Leaves in three different productions that were broadcast on three stations simultaneously. Listeners were invited to switch between the channels to find their own way through the story. This paper focuses on the topic of space as it relates to sound in both the novel and the radio play adaptation, demonstrating how Das Haus relies on medium-specific elements to represent the unnatural narrative space of the story.