Shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2018
Winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction
From the rubble-strewn streets of US-occupied Baghdad, the scavenger Hadi collects human body parts and stitches them together to create a corpse. His goal, he claims, is for the government to recognize the parts as people and give them a proper burial.
But when the corpse goes missing, a wave of eerie murders sweeps the city, and reports stream in of a horrendous-looking criminal who, though shot, cannot be killed.
Hadi soon realises he has created a monster, one that needs human flesh to survive - first from the guilty, and then from anyone who crosses its path.
Appropriately published for the first time in English two centuries after Mary Shelley's Frankenstein took its first, tentative steps, Saadawi's novel reminds us both of the lasting prescience of that original vision and the stark realisation of our own dark present. Described by The Observer as a 'remarkable book' that manages to toe a precarious line, resulting in a book that is 'funny and disturbing in equal measure'. An extraordinary achievement, Frankenstein in Baghdad captures with white-knuckle horror and black humour the surreal reality of a city at war.
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
ISBN: 9781786070609
Number of pages: 288
Dimensions: 216 x 135 x 21 mm
What drew me to this novel was the intriguing title. When I think of Frankenstein I am immediately drawn to the depiction of this "monster" in the writing of Mary Shelley. Was this grotesque creature someone... More
I didn't know what to expect when I picked this up. And I was marvellously surprised. Either down to the translator, Saadawi, or a combination of both, the writing is a breeze to read - engaging and flows... More
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