Frankenstein In Baghdad

''Frankenstein in Baghdad'' () is a 2013 novel by Iraqi writer Ahmed Saadawi. The novel was translated into English by Jonathan Wright. The novel is a wartime spin on Mary Shelley's 1818 novel '' Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.'' The novel has won several awards - it won the IPAF award (International Prize for Arabic Fiction) for 2014, making Saadawi the first Iraqi writer to win the prize, and the 2017 Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire.

Background

The novel took Saadawi four years to write. Saadawi's personal experience informed the creation of the novel: during the civil war, he was working as a journalist in Baghdad; at a morgue, he witnessed how a young man wished to find the corpse of his brother who had been killed by a bomb, but was told to simply take any body parts he could find and make a body.

Plot

In the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Hadi al-Attag, a junk-dealer from the neighborhood of Bataween, collects the scattered body parts of bomb victims with the intention of giving them a proper burial. Hadi first stitches the body parts together to create a single body, calling it "Whatsitsname". One bombing kills a bodyguard and pulverizes his body completely, and his soul enters Whatsitsname and brings it to life. Whatsitsname leaves Hadi's residence and is found by his next-door-neighbor, an elderly Assyrian Christian woman named Elishva, who believes Whatsitname to be her son, Daniel, who was drafted into the conflict with Iran twenty years prior and never returned. Her daughters in Australia, hearing the news of "Daniel"'s return, believe her insane and ask her to leave Iraq and come to live with them; Elishva grows furious and cuts off all contact with them.

Mahmud al-Sawadi is an ambitious young journalist from the city of Amarah. He is in self-imposed exile: in Amarah, he had written an article theorizing that there were three types of justice - legal justice, divine justice, and street justice - and that every criminal would at some point receive one of those justices. The brother of a gangster was killed soon after, and Mahmud was accused of inciting the murder, forcing him to escape to Baghdad, where he works under a charismatic but shady editor, al-Saïdi, whom he aspires to emulate.

Soon, stories spread of unexplained murders and an invincible criminal. Hadi realizes that the murders are likely the work of Whatsitsname. Later he is visited by Whatsitsname, who tells him he is on a mission to avenge those responsible for the deaths of those whose body parts compose his own body. Once he has successfully avenged a victim, their body part will decompose, however, it will also decompose if he fails to avenge them within a certain time. Hadi convinces him to record his story and, in exchange for Mahmud's secret about his origins, he gives him the recording.

Mahmud publishes Whatsitsname's story; the story reaches the Brigadier General Majid, a friend of al-Saïdi, who suspects the story to be connected to the murders. He questions Mahmud, who tells him that he received the story from Hadi, and gives him Hadi's address. Majid then sends his men to Hadi's residence, where they interrogate him about Whatsitsname. Hadi insists that Whatsitsname is not real, nevertheless, he is beaten, left for dead, and robbed. His neighbors find him and nurse him back to health. Meanwhile, Whatsitsname is running out of body parts, and begins to kill innocent civilians to harvest their organs and thus maintain his body. He begins to doubt his mission, wondering if in fact "there are no innocents who are only innocent, and no criminals who are only criminals".

Aziz the Egyptian, Hadi's only friend, tells Mahmud that Hadi began to collect body parts after the death of his friend and business partner, Nahem Abdaki, in a bombing. When Hadi had gone to collect Nahem's body from the morgue, he was told that there were body parts from multiple people who died in the bombing, but no way to tell which body parts belonged to whom, and to simply take any body parts he believed belonged to Nahem. Hadi then decided to collect body parts to give their owners an honorable burial. Aziz convinces Mahmud that Whatsitsname was not real, and Mahmud does not interview Hadi afterwards.

Elishva is convinced to move to Australia by her grandson Daniel, who looks and seems so similar to her son that the old woman is tricked into believing that her son came back from the war. Whatsitsname comes to her home to see her, but finds the home empty. Al-Saïdi is accused of embezzling 13 million dollars, but leaves the country before he can be arrested, leaving Mahmud to be arrested and interrogated and the magazine to be liquidated. Mahmud sells all his possessions to pay the salaries of the magazine employees.

Majid is tipped off by one of his men to Whatsitsname's location in Bataween. When he arrives, a bomb, set by another one of his men to kill Whatsitsname, explodes in the neighborhood, injuring Hadi severely and destroying his home. The bomb, however, fails to kill Whatsitsname. Hadi wakes up in a hospital and discovers that his face has been so badly disfigured that he is now indistinguishable from Whatsitsname. He is then arrested for the crimes of Whatsitsname; Mahmud knows that Hadi could not have been behind the murders, but cannot do anything about it. The fate of Whatsitsname remains unclear. Mahmud returns to Amara, disillusioned with his former ideals of justice; he now believes that there is no justice in Iraq, only anarchy.

Analysis

Whatsitsname is a blank slate who represents different things depending on the individual. For the Sunnis, he is a Shiite extremist, for the Shia, he is a Wahhabi; the Iraqi government describes him as an agent of foreign powers, while the Americans claim that he works against them. For one of his followers, he represents the "first Iraqi citizen", because his body is composed of individuals from diverse ethnic groups, religions, social classes, and races. Whatsitsname sees himself, however, as the deliverer of justice; ultimately, he will find out that "anyone who unilaterally attempts to impose justice... will ultimately fail".

Translations

Reception

The book received almost entirely positive reviews from Western press. The ''New York Times'' stated that the novel "blends the unearthly, the horrific and the mundane to terrific effect". A review in ''Haaretz'' called Saadawi's writing style clever, combining "compassionate moments of grace and sympathy" with "macabre humor that adds a cynical view of the goings-on". British reviewer Sarah Perry suggested that the novel evokes Kafka as well as Shelley, its story emphasizing the pointlessness and surrealism of war. It has been characterized as "one of the most important novels of post-2003 Iraqi literature", and "one of the best novels to emerge from the catastrophe of the Iraq War".

Honors and awards

* Winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, 2014
* Winner of the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire (Foreign Novel), 2017
* Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, 2018
* Shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, 2019

References

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Arabic-language novels
Iraqi novels
Novels set during the Iraq War
Frankenstein novels
2013 novels
Fictional people from Baghdad
Novels winning the International Prize for Arabic Fiction