Name: Frankenstein in Baghdad
Rating: 3.625 (8 reviews)
ISBN: 9781786070609

Ahmed Saadawi

Frankenstein in Baghdad

Tim Pendry

My heart generally sinks when I see four pages of endorsements from the bien-pensants at the front of a book. It generally means that the group-think of the chattering classes has told me what I should admire although it is rare that such a book does not have merits. 'Frankenstein in Baghdad' is no exception and I have a sneaking suspicion that something has got lost in translation because the prose in the first half of the book is distinctly uninspiring. It only really gets going from the mid-way point. There are, however, three merits of this book - as a grim account of the insecurity created for Iraqis in the wake of the Second Gulf War and the fall of Saddam, as a 'spin' on the Frankenstein mythos and its adaptation to Mesopotamian culture and as (briefly) a philosophical investigation of terror. The first speaks for itself. One suspects some of the enthusiasm for the book in the West when it was translated in 2018 (originally published in 2013) owed a great deal to a guilty orientalism - a self-flagellation by Westerners for what it did to Iraq in the cause of moral abstractions. The Arab liberal (blood brother to the Western intellectual) might have hoped for liberation but received instead something constantly on the edge (for some years) of a failed state with the Iraqi authorities and Americans (a ghostly presence here) trying to maintain order. The book gives us an occult representation of the growth of sectarian terror which feeds on itself and whose origins and mentality are a mystery to the educated liberal. Mystery is how to deal with it. This is not an essay in understanding so much as a psychological processing of confusing data. Saadawi casts a cynical eye over post war Iraq giving us much black humour and interesting insights into the corruption at the heart of Iraq. To have an anti-hero who needs to kill for unclear reasons in order not to collapse into a puddle of putrefaction is a stroke of genius in this context. This Frankenstein (translated perhaps clumsily as 'The Whatshisname') has little to do with our Western version. This monster is barely self-reflective unlike Shelley's monster and science plays little role in his creation. Instead Saadawi reaches back into the world of the esoteric and even the Arabian Nights with origins and behaviours that are magical, supernatural and even spiritual. From this point of view, his Frankenstein is authentically Islamic and Arab. Even the bureaucracy is far from rational with the hunt for the monster being master-minded by a security official who has a team of astrologers and mystics on his staff. The Americans (rational actors perhaps) float in and out as distant players disconnected from this magical reality. There are no heavy or obvious political messages here (to Saadawi's credit) but there is a remarkable testimony from the monster at the centre of the book that could stand on its own as a poetic reflection on the impulses behind violence under conditions of social breakdown. The book comes alive here. One gets a sense of Saadawi as a 'thinker' for the first time. There are no easy conclusions from the testimony just a sense of something unthinking and out of control in a world that is unthinking and out of control. The moment is brief but important. Otherwise the novel is a novel of struggling lower class Iraqis ducking and diving to survive economically and physically between car bombs and still with a comprehensible fear of the authorities. Old Baathist habits die hard amongst the local forces of order. It is intriguing if inconclusive but its sly and wry humour is also evasive, half way between satire and reportage. It is something that might be expected to have been written by a Baghdad intellectual almost certainly living in some fear and anxiety themselves. For those who have had little or no contact with the battering taken by Arabs under the guise of liberation (the battering has moved on now to where empires directly meet) this is well worth reading and educative. It might give them an inkling of the results of our incoherent dabbling.

Natali Topliff

This retelling of Frankenstein is set against the backdrop of the aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq, and how people were left to pick up the pieces. It is during this period that the Whatsitsname is built using body parts of those killed during the invasion, however, the Whatsitsname finds that his body parts need to be constantly replaced as they deteriorate.

Bryan Alexander

This is an unusual novel. It's a story of Iraq during the American occupation. It's a fantasy or science fiction novel, riffing on Mary Shelley. It's also a satire of modern Iraqi life. And it all hangs together very well.

Frankenstein in Baghdad is centered on a fantastic conceit. Hadi, a junk dealer and extravagant liar assembles a human body made of corpse bits, and the thing comes to life to wreck vengeance on miscreants. Plots stem off of this, like an older woman grieving for a lost grandson, a military officer trying to bring the monster down, a reporter figuring out the story.

Along the way we see a country in shambles. Ahmed Saadawi's Iraq is wracked by insurgent warfare and military occupation, extensively corrupt and often incompetent, poor and frustrated. Terrorism haunts the land, but is never clearly depicted. American readers may feel disoriented at the lack of any United States characters. Americans appear as mysterious and dangerous forces:Although [Faraj] had clout in the neighborhood, he was still frightened by the Americans. He knew they operated with considerable independence and no one could hold them to account for what they did. As suddenly as the wind could shift, they could throw you down a dark hole.(69)
Why Frankenstein? Saadawai plays many variations on this theme. There's the aspect of body horror, which the novel turns to throughout, and which obviously makes sense for war. There's the sense of western import or invasion. Then there's also the sense of civil war and cycles of violence. The monster is "a composite of victims seeking to avenge their deaths so they could rest in peace" (130), but he keeps adding body parts to maintain his strength, which adds more malefactors to destroy, which takes more time, therefore needing more body parts, and so the cycle continues. The monster ultimately becomes a creature of pure violence, bereft of any other mission: "He knew his mission was essentially to kill, to kill new people every day, but he no longer had a clear idea who should be killed or why." (200) Further, the creature represents all of Iraq:I’m made up of body parts of people from diverse backgrounds—ethnicities, tribes, races, and social classes—I represent the impossible mix that never was achieved in the past. I’m the first true Iraqi citizen... (146-147)
 
On top of this, the novel undercuts its use of Shelley, as the name "Frankenstein" only appears in the work of an unreliable magazine editor (139); Hadi prefers to call the thing "Whatshisname" and others dub it "He Who Has No Name." Actually, the references work quite well. Hadi, like Victor Frankenstein, has problems with responsibility and care. Both lose track of their creations right off the bat. The novel doesn't fully copy Shelley's four-layer narrative structure, but does center the monster's tale through a tape recorder in the book's heart (chapter 10).

How does this fantastic metaphor work in a very real world situation? Quite well, I think, even with the addition of a paranormal investigation brigade. Saadawi slyly counters readers' objections thusly:Over the last three years the local people had heard many stories that were no more believable. Dead people had emerged from the dungeons of the security services and nonexistent people appeared out of nowhere outside the doors of their relatives’ humble houses. There were people who had returned from long journeys with new names and new identities, women who had spent their childhoods in prison cells and had learned, before anything else in life, the rules and conventions for dealing with the warders. There were people who had survived many deaths in the time of the dictatorship only to find themselves face-to-face with a pointless death in the age of “democracy”—when, for example, a motorbike ran into them in the middle of the road. Believers lost their faith when those who had shared their beliefs and their struggles betrayed them and their principles. Nonbelievers had become believers when they saw the “merits” and benefits of faith. The strange things that had come to light in the past three years were too many to count. (235) 

At times the novel reaches a bit too far or its claims misfire. One theme that rises through the later chapters is that of all of humankind being at least partly criminal, which is a bit weak as a way of understanding the Iraqi occupation. Similarly, when Hadi sees himself after an explosion and thinks he's looking at his creature, it's a scene that doesn't exactly shock us or, frankly, do much. The author's appearance during penultimate chapters didn't seem to have much of a point, unless I'm missing some local context.

Otherwise, please read Frankenstein in Baghdad. It's an imaginative, sympathetic, and rich novel. It offers a wide tonal range between gentle comedy, black humor, horror, rumination, and suspense. It reminds us of the power of fantasy to illuminate our world.

Meera

*Man Booker International Prize finalist* “Brave and ingenious.” —The New York Times “Gripping, darkly humorous . . . profound.” —Phil Klay, bestselling author and National Book Award winner for Redeployment “Extraordinary . . . A devastating but essential read.” —Kevin Powers, bestselling author and National Book Award finalist for The Yellow Birds From the rubble-strewn streets of U.S.-occupied Baghdad, Hadi—a scavenger and an oddball fixture at a local café—collects human body parts and stitches them together to create a corpse. His goal, he claims, is for the government to recognize the parts as people and to give them proper burial. But when the corpse goes missing, a wave of eerie murders sweeps the city, and reports stream in of a horrendous-looking criminal who, though shot, cannot be killed. Hadi soon realizes he’s created a monster, one that needs human flesh to survive—first from the guilty, and then from anyone in its path. A prizewinning novel by “Baghdad’s new literary star” (The New York Times), Frankenstein in Baghdad captures with white-knuckle horror and black humor the surreal reality of contemporary Iraq.

A Novel

'Extraordinary... A devastating but essential read.' Kevin Powers, bestselling author and National Book Award finalist for The Yellow Birds 'Gripping, darkly humorous...profound.' Phil Klay, bestselling author and National Book Award winner for Redeployment WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR ARABIC FICTION From the rubble-strewn streets of US-occupied Baghdad, the scavenger Hadi collects human body parts and stitches them together to create a corpse. His goal, he claims, is for the government to recognize the parts as people and give them a proper burial. But when the corpse goes missing, a wave of eerie murders sweeps the city, and reports stream in of a horrendous-looking criminal who, though shot, cannot be killed. Hadi soon realises he has created a monster, one that needs human flesh to survive first from the guilty, and then from anyone who crosses its path. An extraordinary achievement, Frankenstein in Baghdad captures with white-knuckle horror and black humour the surreal reality of a city at war.

Frankenstein in Baghdad

Reviews

Highlights