Title: Frankenstein in Baghdad
Author: Ahmed Saadawi
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 278
Rating: 4/5
This book is a literary prize winner, and with good reason. So, where do we begin?
Well, as you can probably tell from the title, it’s a retelling of Frankenstein that’s set in Baghdad during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Someone’s taking body parts from the dead and putting them back together. With predictable results, given that everyone knows the vague outline of Frankenstein by this point.
But this book is so much more than just a Frankenstein retelling, and in fact that’s not really the point of it. That element gives us a few plot points, but the idea here is more to explore what life was like in Iraq at the start of the 21st century and to play with the relationships between the people that call the city home.
The prose is of a high enough quality, although it’s hard to know how much to attribute to Saadawi given that the book is translated. Really, though, the impressive thing here is the way that the characters feel so real and how when I put the book down, I could almost smell the blood and feel the sand between my toes.
It’s actually a tough book to categorise because I’m not really sure what the genre is, other than that nebulous one of “literary fiction”. I also understand why it did so well with awards, because it’s definitely the kind of book that makes you think. And I like the way it shows that people are basically the same no matter where they’re from.