Songs From the Other Room is a novel taking place during four days in a tiny remote oasis in Sahara. The main character Nour Badawi Troelsen, is, against his wishes, sent out by his Danish mother to attend the funeral of his unknown paternal grandmother. Nour’s wedding is in four days, Ramadan is about to begin and Nour’s big city decorating business is collapsing.
The plan is to show his face in the oasis and quickly return to the capital to attend to his business and the wedding arrangements that he secretly wish to escape. But after the funeral, getting away from the oasis family he has never met before, is not as easy as he had anticipated. Not only does he get unwillingly entangled in the bizarre stories about the father he has never known and the enigmatic social structure of the tiny village, furthermore some unknown world event shuts down traffic and soon the power grid collapses. They are cut off from the world as northern lights inexplicably begin to illuminate the night sky and Ramadan begins. A charismatic sufi singer appears as an army on foot passes through the oasis.
Enmeshed in local myths, an undecipherable social hierarchy and convoluted family dramas that he wants nothing to do with, Nour barricades himself inside a newly build mud brick dome. In an attempt to maintain his frail sanity while kept awake by drugs, Nour begins to decorate the dome inside. He paints a walk-in mandala that depicts the development of Islamic art over time, and the longing to reach up from the world of complexity, towards the simplicity of God. The Ramadan festivities begin and a strange madness, orchestrated by the man that Nour suspects or hopes might be his real father, grips the village and demolishes ancient traditions of segregation. The lines between reality and myth begin to blur as the masterpiece in the dome reaches its apex. The true nature of his grandmother is uncovered, and deep secrets are waiting to be exposed.