Two hundred years ago, English writer Mary Shelley created a monster that never died. In her book Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein, a mad scientist, fashioned a patchwork zombie out of deceased body parts; the tale has been endlessly reanimated and reimagined in popular cinema, theatre and books. Such was its appeal and fame that the nameless monster in Shelley's book gobbled up the name of its creator in the history of time to become Frankenstein himself, the famous fiend, a picture of eloquence and evil.
The "hideous and gigantic creature", castigated by his own creator and the society at large, has now come to haunt a US-occupied Baghdad. Iraqi writer Ahmed Saadawi retells the saga in his book Frankenstein in Baghdad, long-listed for Man Booker International Prize 2018.
Hadi, a scrap dealer from strife-torn Baghdad, likes to forage for random, stray objects. One day he starts collecting severed body parts to jerry-rig a corpse so it can get a proper burial, since dismembered body parts don't seem to deserve one. He does this out of the goodness of his heart and he wants the government to see the merit in his creation. But the assembled corpse goes missing one day, followed by a spate of murders across the city. And, the criminal is strangely horrifying to look at. He refuses to die in spite of getting battered with multiple bullets. The cops round up all the unseemly-looking people of Baghdad as suspects. The dreaded creature becomes a media sensation, ready to offer interviews where he goes to pains to explain that he only wishes to exact revenge on those whose bombs were responsible for the body parts.
Suffused with macabre humour, this novel captures the bizarre reality of life that is contemporary Baghdad. Soon the violence unleashed by Frankenstein in Baghdad spirals out of control and what happens to Hadi is something one may want to grab the book to find out before spoilers come pouring forth. "What happened in Iraq was a spiritual disaster, and this brave and ingenious novel takes that idea and uncorks all its possible meanings," noted Dwight Garner in a January review of the book in The New York Times.
Translated from the Arabic by Jonathan Wright, the book won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction and France's Grand Prize for Fantasy. It is now in contention for Man Booker International Prize which recognises the best in translated fiction in English globally, with a prize money of £50,000, divided equally between the author and the translator. Previous recipients of the award include László Krasznahorkai (Hungary) and Han Kang (South Korea).
Even if the book fails to make the cut in the shortlist of six books of Man Booker International to be announced on 12 April, it is an important piece of political literature to emerge out of Iraq.