Frankenstein in Baghdad
ABOUT
THE BOOK
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.
Frankenstein in Baghdad captures with white-knuckle horror and black humour the surreal reality of contemporary Iraq.
NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS
Frankenstein in Baghdad reflects on the events in the Iraqi capital in 2005 from a number of viewpoints. A central character, Hadi, collects body parts to sew them onto torn up corpses to allow them a proper burial and the possibility of peace in the afterlife. A soul enters the Frankenstein-like monster, it comes to life to take revenge on the guilty. However, the line between innocent and guilty can’t be drawn clearly. This is a violent, absurdist fable which depicts the war as pointless, chaotic and surreal. Borrowing its central idea from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, it also incorporates elements of the Arabian Nights. Funny in a wicked way but politically relevant nonetheless, the book is brilliant and necessary reminder of the ongoing conflict.