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bluejayreads's review against another edition
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.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Blood, Death, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Child death, Gore, Torture, Police brutality, and Fire/Fire injury
Minor: War and Sexual content
seawarrior's review against another edition
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.
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.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Body horror, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, Grief, Mass/school shootings, Medical content, Murder, Police brutality, Violence, and War
biblizo's review against another edition
challenging
dark
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? It's complicated
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, War, Violence, Police brutality, and Death
theanxiousbookworm's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Body horror, Death, Gun violence, and Sexual assault
morganphoenix's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Violence, Murder, and Death
talislibrary's review against another edition
dark
reflective
sad
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? It's complicated
4.0
This retelling of Frankenstein is set against the backdrop of the aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq, and how people were left to pick up the pieces. It is during this period that the Whatsitsname is built using body parts of those killed during the invasion, however, the Whatsitsname finds that his body parts need to be constantly replaced as they deteriorate.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Death, and Murder
Moderate: Child death and Police brutality
mandkips's review against another edition
challenging
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Blood, Death, Grief, Torture, Violence, Body horror, and Gun violence
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