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Frankenstein in Baghdad was originally published in Arabic in 2013. In 2014, it was awarded the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (sometimes known as the "Arabic Booker"). It is now (early-2018) being made available in English translation (by Jonathan Wright). Writing in the New York Times in 2014, Tim Arango said "Mr. Saadawi � is at the vanguard of a small group of writers starting to interpret, through fiction, the trauma wrought from the American invasion of 2003.". And you can judge how important this book is for the Iraqi people from the fact that the article goes on to quote another Iraqi author (Ibrahim Abdul Jabbar) as saying about Saadawi, and this book in particular, that "He has given us faith that Iraq is still alive, and we are the ones who can make change if we have the will."

In fact, the whole article by Arango is worth reading: .

Framed as a story developed from documents sent to "the author" by a source within the Tracking and Pursuit Department, Frankenstein in Baghdad tells the story a monster on the loose in Baghdad. It is magical realism. It is gothic horror. It is an exploration of the damage done to property, culture and people by the war.

I was staggered to discover this Wikipedia page when doing some background research. The book is set in 2005 (the year of the first free elections after the fall of Hussein) and this page lists the acts of terror in Iraq during that year: . It is a sobering read and the book itself is punctuated by ongoing acts of terror (suicide bombings). We learn a bit of what it is to live in a city scarred by war and its consequences. For an outsider (e.g. me) this is harrowing reading, but it is impossible not to pause and imagine what it must be like for the actual inhabitants of the city and what it must be like to read this book if you have been part of the story it tells.

The book begins with a suicide bombing:

"The explosion was horrific—and here Hadi looked to Aziz for confirmation. Hadi had run out of the coffee shop. He had been eating some of the beans that Ali al-Sayed made in the shop next door and that Hadi ate for breakfast every morning. On his way out of the shop he collided with people running from the explosion. The smell suddenly hit his nostrils—the smoke, the burning of plastic and seat cushions, the roasting of human flesh. You wouldn’t have smelled anything like it in your life and would never forget it."

And this sets the tone for the book where everyday actions of living in the city (coffee, breakfast, etc.) are mingled with acts of terror and gore. In fact, in one of life’s unpleasant coincidences, the day I wrote this review (15 Jan 2018) was marked by a huge suicide bombing in the same city square as the one that opens this book, making the message of this book all the more important and contemporary.

Near the start of the book, we meet Hadi who has assembled a corpse from body parts he has gathered in the aftermath of the multiple suicide bombings that are destroying Baghdad. By a bizarre series of events, that corpse is animated and becomes the Frankenstein-type of the book’s title. The creature becomes a metaphor for the war that has wreaked havoc in Baghdad. Initially, the Whatsitsname (the label given to the creature) sets out to kill the people responsible for the deaths of those who make up his body. But, like war, it does not stop there:

"There’s no harm in warning him so he doesn’t offend me again. I’m now taking revenge on people who insult me, not just on those who did violence to those whose body parts I’m made of," the Whatsitsname said.

The killing gets out of control, mirroring the impact and destructive patterns of war in the city.

The book is all the more chilling for the sparsity of its prose. Saadawi does not mess around with words, but he does notice some macabre details that bring home the reality of life in a war torn city:

"In the coffin they put his burned black shoes; his shredded, bloodstained clothes; and small charred parts of his body."

And, in parallel with the story of the Whatsitsname, we see other stories of people in Baghdad as they develop and interact. It is worthwhile spending some time on the character list at the start of the book as this makes the story easier to follow, especially for Western readers who will find some of the names hard to remember. Don’t be fooled by the title: this is not just a horror story about a monster. It is about people, it is about life in Iraq, it is about the consequences of war.

This has all the feel of a very important book. Important primarily for the people it is about and who must be its primary target. But also important for the rest of the world, which makes its English translation a significant event. As Arango says in his review:

"For the Americans, though, turning their experiences into fiction is a retrospective act, because their war ended. For Iraqis like Mr. Saadawi, the war is still their present, haunting their reality even as they try to make the best of it � going to work in the morning, putting dinner on the table, watering the plants."

Like me, you may not read many books that concentrate on magical realism, allegory and symbolism. But you should read this one.