Frankenstein In Baghdad

In this dark satire, Ahmed Saadawi creates a monster that needs human flesh to survive - first from the guilty, then from anyone in its path. Translated by Jonathan Wright.

From the rubble-strewn streets of US-occupied Baghdad, the junk dealer 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.

"The monster is a powerful metaphor, but the real reason the novel works is that Saadawi writes with a rare combination of generosity, cruelty, and black humour. He has a journalist’s eye for detail and a cartoonist’s sense of satire (he’s been both). What the reader comes away remembering are not the fantastic elements in the story, but the day-to-day struggles of Baghdadis."  -  Roy Scranton, The New Republic

Ahmed Saadawi was born in Baghdad, Iraq, in May 1973.  He is a novelist, poet, screenwriter and documentary filmmaker. He is the first Iraqi to win the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, commonly called the Arabic Booker Prize, which he won in 2014 for Frankenstein in Baghdad. In 2010 he was selected for Beirut39, as one of the 39 best Arab authors under the age of 40. He lives in Baghdad.