Frankenstein in Baghdad

Originally published in Arabic in 2014, Iraqi author Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. And it does what it says on the packet: it’s about a man-made, sewn-together corpse that terrorises Baghdad. Set during the Iraqi war in the mid-2000s, the book is a surrealist take on the senselessness of war and, like its namesake Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, examines the capacity for cruelty that humans possess.

The novel centres on a decimated Baghdad neighbourhood whose decrease in population directly correlates with the increase in suicide bombings and military presence. The narrative moves between the remaining inhabitants of the neighbourhood, where the Whatsitsname – a creature made of the body parts of innocent victims of the war – is born, and the people invested in uncovering the story: a troubled journalist and a clandestine government department that utilises magic and astrology to track down terrorists.

While the intersecting plotlines do lose momentum at times, the experimental mix of dark comedy, gore, and surrealism make for a thought-provoking and highly entertaining meditation on the human cost of war.

Jonathan Wright has translated Frankenstein in Baghdad into English, managing to convey a complex narrative that includes many players without getting the threads too tangled. However, if you’re looking for a serious novel that deals with the political complexities of war in the Middle East, this is not it. Frankenstein in Baghdad is a blackly comic satire of bureaucracy and power, and how the everyday people caught up in war most often have no idea what’s going on in the upper echelons of government.

Kelsey Oldham works as a bookseller at Readings Hawthorn.