Reviews with content warning for Fire/Fire injury - Frankenstein w Bagdadzie

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Frankenstein w Bagdadzie by Ahmed Saadawi

9 reviews

jsuispoesie's review against another edition

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dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

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addyruth17's review against another edition

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informative mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

The application of the ideas surrounding Frankenstein were intriguing here: vengeance, guilt and innocence, humanity's collective anger and grief. The rest of the book didn't really live up to the promise of this premise: I'd say there were too many plot lines and I wasn't very invested in any of them. The clunky translation also brought the reading experience down.

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toffishay's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is one of my favorite books of all time and I am so intrigued by how stories that we know can be reimagined and adapted to analyze different fears and different times with different actors. In the case of Frankenstein in Baghdad, the tale of a Frankenstein monster is not used to expose fears of science and paternalism, but of exploring violence and the impacts of war, religion and spirituality, and identity and purpose. All that I didn't like was that I would have liked more exploration of the female characters who have interesting stories, but not as much time on the page and some characters get a lot of time, but little payoff. I think that if you are interested in horror and a reimagined classic, this is certainly worth your time.

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annemaries_shelves's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

As a retelling of Frankenstein and its philosophy - who is the monster, what does it mean to be a person and to purse justice, how do you reconcile your past with your future, the balance of nature vs nurture - Frankenstein in Baghdad did a good job.
I can see why people think it's brilliant and how it won awards, but for me personally, it's fine as a novel. Nothing too special in my reading experience.

As with the original, the monster is the most interesting character and we never get enough time with him. There are a lot of tangents and other character povs, which may be annoying to some readers. I enjoyed how all the characters added to the sense of place and time and the exploration of the American invasion of Iraq and subsequent impacts of war on society. However, this detracted from the framing device of the monster - an extra 20-30 pages with the monster's perspective would've been great.

My favourite characters were Hadi (his story and resolution made me so sad) and Elishva, whose enduring love for her long lost/dead son was bittersweet. I do wish there were more female characters pov than just Elishva, who was painted as the "crazy old woman." Mahmoud - my least favourite and most common pov - had a really awful perspective on women and "love" (aka obsession) that was delusional, disrespectful, and all too common among many men. He frustrated and engaged me as a character.

Overall, an interesting and thought-provoking read that probably won't stick with me too long. I'm glad I finally read this off my shelves.

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mengzhenreads's review against another edition

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challenging mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I really loved the concept and execution of this book, it was horrifying and thought-provoking and just a great exploration of the logic of violence and vengeance. This was definitely a difficult read but it was absolutely worth it.

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mme_carton's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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igafk's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

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bluejayreads's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated

4.0

I picked this up because I was intrigued by the concept of taking the “man made of parts from multiple people” idea and setting it in early-2000s Iraq. Plus it was written by an Iraqi author who lived in Baghdad in the early aughts, which is always a benefit for authenticity.

The back cover makes it sound like Hadi is the main character, but he’s really not. There isn’t really a “main character” in this book, just a series of minor protagonists alternating perspectives to weave a story that feels less like a Structured Plot and more like part of real life. (The same thing is true of Celestial Bodies, so I’m beginning to wonder if Middle Eastern novels just have a very different structure from Western novels.)

The main players in this story are as follows:

Hadi, who makes a living buying junk, fixing it up, and selling it, and who collected pieces of people blown up in car bombings and sewed them into a single corpse.
An elderly lady who lives next door to Hadi and who refuses to sell her house and emigrate with her daughters because she still believes her son will come home.
A reporter who desperately wants to be like his powerful, wealthy, connected, asshole editor and reports on the reanimated corpse roaming Baghdad.
The monster himself, who has the opportunity to tell his story in his own words.

The monster’s story is almost entirely told as audio that the monster recorded onto an audio recorder and gave to the journalist, and that takes up a large chunk of the middle of the book. Beyond that, most of his story is told through other people seeing or hearing about his actions. The reporter has the most page time by far, but that makes sense since he is the most connected and in the best position to get the most parts of the story.

Each of the main protagonists in the story could be a complete character-focused story on their own.

Hadi is suffering from a past tragedy and trying to hide the dubiously-legal steps he’s taking to deal with it, the emotional toll leaving him struggling to work even though he’s running out of money.
The elderly lady refuses to move out of her dangerous neighborhood to live with her daughters because the picture of Saint George she has on her wall has told her that her son, who never returned from the war two decades ago, will soon come home.
The journalist has been taken under the wing of the editor of his magazine, and desperately wants to be like him – whether that means cozying up to people he hates or abandoning his friends to get ahead.
The monster doesn’t know why he’s alive but he knows he has a mission, and undertaking that mission has brought him many disciples with different opinions of how the mission should be done and what the monster’s ultimate purpose is.

In a lot of ways it feels like several smaller stories based around the protagonists’ character arcs were put into a single volume and somehow wove together to form a bigger picture of tumultuous early-aughts Iraq and a Frankenstein’s monster loosed on the streets of Baghdad. It’s like some sort of artwork in multiple pieces, where every piece is a complete image in and of itself but when you put them together it forms another, bigger image.

Frankenstein in Baghdad is a well-told story, I’m very impressed with how it weaves together multiple character-focused stories to form another complete story, it has a lot of commentary about early-aughts Iraq that I think I would find more meaningful if I had been aware of world news in the early aughts, and it did keep me interested enough to read the whole book. I’m not entirely sure what to make of it when it comes to entertainment, but it was creative and engaging enough – and regardless of my personal opinion, I think it does have objective literary merit.

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seawarrior's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Through the lore of the original Frankenstein emerges this layered horror story surrounding a group of neighbors going about their lives during the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Much like the title creation itself, Frankenstein in Baghdad possesses a narrative stitched together from the perspectives and fears of multiple Iraqi victims of war, successfully humanizing these people who have long been ignored by the originator of their pain. The story focuses solely on characters who are Iraqi, with U.S. military operatives portrayed as shadowy and indifferent figures in the background of their lives, but make no mistake, "it was the Americans who were behind this monster".

Our story begins after a junk dealer, Hadi, collected the body parts of bombing victims left in the street and compiled them to physically construct the creature he calls "Whatsitsname". He made this gruesome task his mission in the hopes that these remainders of corpses "wouldn't be treated as trash, so [they] would be respected like other dead people and given a proper burial". Unknown to Hadi, life is bestowed upon this assembly of loss when the soul of yet another bombing victim possesses the Whatsitsname, who is then claimed by a grieving mother as the answer to her prayers for her son's return from war. The Whatsitsname was made entire by victims whose lives and bodies were ripped apart, their deaths never avenged and their hurt never resolved. Thus it quickly becomes engrossed in an quest for revenge it soon learns is never ending, as it must continue collecting the parts of new victims to sustain itself, even though its very notion of victimhood grows murkier with each part vindicated.

Numerous passages throughout this book read as profound understandings of fear, revenge, and humanity. Saadawi both utilizes and elevates Frankenstein's portrayal of grief as a righteous pain that can prove itself monstrous if left as a wound unhealing. Yet in his adaption the grief which molds a monster is not possessed solely by one man, but by an entire country. I highly recommend this book to those who feel they can handle the subject matter. My only dissatisfaction with it lies with the ending, which felt somewhat rushed, especially in comparison to the tightly woven narratives of the previous chapters. Yet overall, I found this novel both deeply disturbing and emotionally moving, often at the same time. Every accolade given to it has been diligently earned.

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