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Frankenstein in Baghdad is hard to categorize. Is it horror or magical realism? Or is it a clever social satire? The only thing I can say for sure is that it's brilliant.

The novel is set in US-occupied Iraq, in the middle of political chaos where suicide bombings are almost as frequent as car crashes in any other country. As the summary says, Hadi, a local junk dealer put together a corpse from various parts of bombing victims to give a proper burial to these people which needs a whole body. But things take a strange turn, and the corpse comes to life much like the classic inspiration of the book's title and goes on a killing spree to avenge the people whose body parts it's made of. The 'Whatsitsname' (as the corpse is called by Hadi)links the different people in this story together: Elishva, an old Jewish woman who lost her son to the war and belives 'Whatsitsname' to be her lost son brought back to life, Mahmoud, the journalist investigating this story, the army general trying to capture him. As the story moves forward, we get to see the philosophy of Whatistsname, and in his story the boundary of faith blurs with madness. In a country ravaged with terror attacks it puts perspective into the meaning of actions and what define guilt and innocence. At the end of the story, I am not even certain if Whatsitsname actually existed or he is figment of imagination created to justify unexplained actions in a collapsing society, or to create some hope of vigilante justice among suffering innocents. 

The tone of the writing is darkly amusing, which makes a rather depressing situation more tolerable. The narrative keeps moving forward dn back, giving different perspectives on the same events. It's a very smart story and a fascinating storytelling.