Frankenstein a Bagdad
Abstract
Ahmed Saadawi modern-day Frankenstein novel set in Baghdad won the Arab world's top prize for fiction in 2014. Frankenstein in Baghdad captures the impossibility of justice in the aftermath of decades of war and violence in Iraq. Rather than focusing on witnessing as a way to document this troubled past/present, the magical realism of the narrative allows the author to explore the array of emotions of terror and vengeance that characterises the frayed fabric of life and justice in the country. It is indeed a commentary on contemporary violence and its attempt to obscure and deny local and personal histories and wounds of ordinary Iraqis. It is a response to the simplistic characterization of Iraqis as ungovernable–torn between sectarian and ethnic identities and an attempt to exorcise the demons that haunt the life of ordinary people who are caught in the 'awe' of decades of brutality