Extraordinary book--stunningly well written, elegant translation, evocative and powerful tour de force of art, history, and emotional power

"The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction." The Merchant of Venice.

Near the beginning of our story, a young guard shoots at a suicide bomber barrelling at him in a dump truck. The bomber, realizing he won't make it to his destination detonates the bomb early obliterating himself and the guard. The guard's soul awakens only to learn he cannot be at rest until he returns to his body. With nothing but two smoldering boots left, he finds a body without a soul. A body that has been stitched together from different victims of violence. The soul rests inside, his soul, this body, and a creator's tale make both our protagonist and antagonist. For revenge is a dish best served cold, but where is the line between revenge and murder?

A sort of magical realism tale set in Iraq during the American invasion. Not only is a Frankenstein created out of the body parts of different victims, there is also wizardry and ancient sorcery involved. At first, our Frankenstein sets out to seek revenge for every victim that makes up his body. When the perpetrator meets retribution, that body part dissolves. If he does not kill the person in time, the body part returns to dead life. The dark wizards involved in this world add a twist. What if those who make up the body are not innocent victims either? What happens when it isn't justice, but more injustice? The end result is a philosophical rumination on the senseless of war.

"There are laws that human beings are unaware of. These laws don't operate around the clock like the physical laws by which the wind blows, the rain falls, and rocks fall down mountains, or like other laws that because they apply to things that recur, human beings can observe, verify and define. There are laws that operate only under special conditions, and when something happens under these laws, people are surprised and say it's impossible, that it's a fairy tale or in the best case a miracle. They don't say they are unaware of the law behind it."

<i>Frankenstein in Baghdad</i> by Ahmed Saadawi was a very interesting read. It follows a group of people who all live in the same area of Baghdad, the strange circumstances surrounding the creation of a monster, and what happens when that monster is let loose in a war torn city.

Those looking for a close retelling of Shelley's <i>Frankenstein</i> will be disappointed, but there is so much more to this story than just the monster. The monster, or "Whatsitsname", is made up of the fragmented remains of bombing victims and is compelled to seek revenge on those he deems responsible for the deaths of the people his parts once belonged to. Ruthless and almost unstoppable the "Whatsitsname" can't stop until he has fulfilled his purpose.

Additionally, everyone in this story is on a journey (physical or metaphorical): To find revenge; To get a better job; To find someone they lost. These journeys are never straightforward, even for the "Whatsitsname" who seems to question himself at every turn.

I really loved this book, not just for the creepy monster story, but because there was so much depth and humanity to the story. I would recommend this book to those who are fans of a more literary horror story.

This book riffs on the themes and ideas of Mary Shelley’s original, but it takes place in modern day Iraq, and the monster is assembled by a junk collector instead of a surgeon, and the plot is different. Hadi, a junk collector, assembles the monster from body parts left on the streets after suicide bombings and battles. Like the original, the monster in this book evokes questions about identity and personhood, with parts of others combined into a new whole. Unlike the original Frankenstein, the monster here not so much features as the main character in this book as much as he haunts the book with his presence, similar to how war and violence have been haunting life in Iraq. One of the characters in the novel, the journalist Mahmoud al-Sawadi (did the author, Saadawi, put himself in the book?), wants to interview the monster and assemble the story into a book, similar to Hadi assembling stray body parts into a monster, or Saadawi writing this novel. What I’m saying is, this book has depth, but is still a fascinating story even if you don’t want to look too far beneath the surface.