Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi – Book Review

Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi – Book Review
Sadiah Bemat

3.5/5 Stars
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Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad is a retelling of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, where readers are transported to the United States’ invasion of Iraq. The novel follows Hadi, a junk dealer, considered an oddball, who enjoys spending his days at the local cafe telling tales and stories. A close companion, Nahem, endures a violent death. Hadi spirals and begins to collect the body parts of people who die these sudden deaths in everyday bombings, and begins to stitch them together, becoming the reimagined Victor Frankenstein in Shelly’s classic story. His reason for doing so is simple: he wants the government to recognize the innocent civilians as people, and to give them a proper burial. Things begin to go awry when this amalgamation of Hadi’s collected and stolen limbs comes to life, whom he calls Whatsitsame, chases his own justice as he begins to enact revenge for the people whose limbs he is composed of, murdering their killers, and then beginning to kill anything in his path.  

Hadi’s creation of Whatsitsname challenged a common pattern within media coverage of devastating conflicts, genocides, and war zones, which is the dehumanization of innocent civilians who are killed. Similar to the realities during the US invasions of Iraq in 2002, the journalists in the novel document the daily tragedies and deaths of innocents, to the point that it is just a part of the daily existence of the characters. Hadi is pushed to his breaking point after his friend Nahem is killed. This profound loss pushes Hadi to his breaking point, and he begins to collect the limbs of the forgotten. 

Victim deaths are often quantified into numbers and statistics, removing individual stories and suffering, making observers detached, and perpetuating a notion of normalization of the tragic loss of lives. By collecting the limbs of the innocent, Hadi pushes to end this reduction of lives, and for the government to see each life as its own significant existence, not just faceless masses that fade and are forgotten. 

Saadawi’s reinterpretation makes us question who the real monster of this story is. Is it the Whatitsname, for enacting revenge, then delving into senseless killing? Is it Hadi for creating the creature in the first place, and avoiding Whatitsname altogether because of his immense fear towards the creation that he ‘fathered,’ as he calls it? Or, is it the political forces at play? 
In my interpretation, the creation of Whatsitsname is not a fearful and violent monster. Rather, he serves as a mirror of the various political forces that are involved in Iraq's destruction. The creature serves as a reflection of their crimes and their consequences, which is the death of Innocent Iraqi civilians, whose limbs he is created from.

While I immensely enjoyed the novel, there were a few moments where I think the story lags. There is a huge list of characters, which is a list provided at the front of the book, but it was still difficult to keep track and made me less invested in some of the characters, creating this disconnect at some points of the story. 

One of my favourite aspects of the novel was the description of the setting and everyday life. Saadawi was masterful at placing readers within Iraq in 2002, showing how life for ordinary people was uprooted through violence, sudden losses, and showing the unstable conditions that people had to live through. At one point, we follow the soul of a man who goes home and sees his wife and infant child asleep, before any news of his death reaches them. These characters are all ordinary citizens who are living simple lives, but the invasion has made their ordinary lives unsafe, and unexpected tragedies have become expected and a normal part of everyday life. 

Something that I think was highlighted well was the coexistence of Muslims, Christians, and non-religious people, showing the diverse population of Iraq, rather than the dominant hegemonic view that is usually depicted. While Hadi is non-religious, his close friend Nehman was a devout Muslim, and had left a lasting memory within Hadi’s life, particularly when Nehman had glued the Throne Verse, also known as Ayat al-Kursi, from the Qur’an in the place they lived. This verse is one of the most powerful ones and is used for protection, so it made sense as to why Nehman glued it to make it difficult to remove. This reminds me of when I was younger and had issues with sleep paralysis and nightmares; my dad also taped this verse to my headboard, where it still resides to this day.  

There are moments when I laughed, and moments when I felt angry. For me, a novel where the characters make me care and feel deeply invested in their lives is automatically highly rated, so I recommend everyone to read this novel, whether you are a die-hard fan of Frankenstein, enjoy a good sci-fi book, or want an exploration of how individuals living in Iraq were impacted during the US invasions though a literary critique.