Lit in Translation

Frankenstein in Baghdad

فرانكشتاين في بغداد · Frankenstein fi Baghdad

Ahmed Saadawi (أحمد سعداوي, born 1973)

Translated by Jonathan Wright

English editions

In English

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Hadi al-Attag deals in second-hand goods in Baghdad's Bataween quarter. In 2005 he picks up the remains of bomb victims and sews them together into one body. A homeless soul moves in and the corpse gets up: Hadi names it Whatsitsname, the police call it Criminal X, and others Frankenstein. It begins to hunt down the murderers of each of the people it was assembled from. Regulars at Aziz the Egyptian's café treat Hadi's tale as a joke, but Brigadier Surur Majid, who runs a secret tracking unit, is ordered to catch the killer. Their paths cross those of the elderly Assyrian Elishva and the young reporter Mahmoud al-Sawadi, in a city where everyone fears what they cannot see.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form
Novel
Genres
Speculative, War (assigned by AI)
Set in
Iraq, 2005
First published
2013 by Manshurat al-Jamal
Author's age
40 when first published
ISBN

9780143128793 (Penguin Books, United States)

9781786073976 (Oneworld Publications, United Kingdom)

More
Wikidata