Iraqi Gothic... Ahmed Saadawi's "Frankenstein in Baghdad"

Iraqi Gothic... Ahmed Saadawi's "Frankenstein in Baghdad"

Baghdad, a city torn apart by conflict, where car bombs sow death on a numbingly regular basis. Baghdad, a city where the balance between different cultures and faiths, delicate at the best of times, is jeopardised by covert lobbies and political pressure groups. Baghdad, a city whose sons and daughters are sacrificed – lost or dead in wars, or emigrants in foreign countries, lured by the promise of peace. 

These daily horrors are transformed by Ahmed Saadawi into a contemporary Gothic novel, in which the violence which stalks the streets of Baghdad is personified in the figure of the monstrous “Whatsisname”. Pieced together by Hadi the Junk Dealer from body parts of car bomb victims, the Whatsisname is animated by the soul of Hasib Mohamed Jaafar, a hotel guard killed in a terrorist attack. The spark which joins body and soul is the constant prayer of old Elishva, who has not yet lost hope of the return of her son Daniel, lost decades before in the Iran-Iraq War. The “Whatsitsname” embarks on a mission of righteous revenge against criminals, only to become himself (itself?) drawn into a vicious cycle of violence. 

Frankenstein in Baghdad won its author the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2014 and is now available in a brilliant English translation by Jonathan Wright. It was suggested to me by my Goodreads friend Alan as a work of “Iraqi Gothic”. And “Gothic” it certainly is. After all, it features a monster nicknamed by the Baghdadi newspapers as “Frankenstein”, it contains brief but stomach-churning passages of body horror and it recycles and adapts several tropes of the genre. The ruins of old are replaced by bombed-out buildings, the cemeteries substituted by the tragic scenes following the umpteenth terrorist attack. There is also more than a nod to the Gothic in the fragmented narrative and the recurring theme of mistaken identities. Thus, the book opens with a “Final Report” about the shadowy “Tracking and Pursuit Department” which casts doubt on the veracity of the whole story as presented to us. Part of the novel is a transcript of an interview recorded by the monster himself or, possibly, an impostor posing as him. Throughout, there is a sense that “nothing is but what is not”. 

Yet, particularly in its initial chapters, what the novel reminded me of were not the classics of the Gothic but, rather, the works of Mikhail Bulgakov. In fact, as in Bulgakov, the fantastical elements often have a whimsical, surreal, fairy-tale tinge quite unlike traditional “supernatural” fiction – saints speak from icons, astrologers assist the army, the souls of the dead meet for chats. There is also a strong streak of dark humour and satire which sometimes had me laughing aloud. Admittedly, the novel becomes increasingly grim as it progresses and the final scene is poignant, bleak and very effective. 

It was recently announced that the novel would be turned into a film. I certainly look forward to that. This unusual and striking novel certainly deserves to be well-known.

Paperback, UK Edition, 272 pages

Published February 1st 2018 by Oneworld (first published January 1st 2013)