This surreal novel by Iraqi author and film-maker Ahmed Saadawi is not a travel sequel starring Mary Shelley’s creation (you’d laugh but I actually went to a literary event about the book where the host implied that 😭 you don’t have to read all of it, but at least be prepared if you are going to talk about it!)

We find Hadi, a junk-dealer, scavenging for body parts of many bomb victims in Baghdad in the US occupied Iraq. Hadi is on a mission to give these parts a proper burial by first stitching them onto a body he calls Whatsitsname. On the same night when he finally obtains the last missing bit – a nose – a hotel security guard is killed by an exploding truck, and his spirit, unable to locate the vaporised body after the explosion, and not knowing what to do next, seeks advice at the cemetery and is told to find another body immediately or else worse things would happen.

In due time, the guard’s spirit finds Hadi’s creation and enters the body, “filling it from head to toe”. Then Whatitsname comes to life. Possessed by righteous fury of all the victims whose body parts made him complete, he decides to bring justice to those who are responsible. Every night he restlessly seeks them out and carries out his executions. That of course attracts attention of the government, the Baghdad press and the Tracking and Pursuit Department (a special information unit set up by the Americans, which uses astrologers and fortune-tellers to try and predict future crimes).

As soon as a particular revenge mission is completed, Whatsitsname discovers that the avenged body part drops off. That creates a need for further killings to replace the constituent parts, and at first he tries to stick to getting them from murderers and those who ‘deserve it’, but as more and more of his body becomes made up of criminal parts, he begins killing less discriminately, judging that noone is completely innocent. This idea of violence only begetting more violence is a powerful metaphor for the war itself.

I loved it. It’s tragic, it’s surreal (knowing that so much of what’s written refers to reality) and at the same time it made me laugh out loud.

This book (having won IPAF) has been shortlisted for International Man Booker 2018, the literary prize that I’m starting to follow even more than its English big brother. The literature that gets nominated for it is guaranteed to broaden your horizons, to take your mind and heart travelling and to make you more understanding and compassionate.

Frankenstein in Baghdad has a lot to say about satire, fiction and horror, but even more about the disaster and terror of war. Ahmed Saadawi did a wonderful job writing this novel, and Jonathan Wright an equally important one translating it into English.