Reviews with content warning for War - Frankenstein in Baghdad

Reviews tagging 'War'

Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi

38 reviews

serendipitysbooks's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Frankenstein in Baghdad is a book very much outside my wheelhouse and was in many ways a challenging read with a blurry line between what was real and what was not, frequently changing perspectives, and a large cast of characters to keep track of. There was a character list provided, but I found it a lot less helpful on audio than it would have been in print when flipping back and forward is so easy. This novel takes the broad outline of the Frankenstein story, shifts it to a neighbourhood in Baghdad around the time of the US invasion and the death of Saddam Hussein, and uses it to make some very insightful comments about the horrors of war generally and that war in particular. Hadi, a local scavenger collects body parts left on the streets after bombings and other acts of violence, and stitches them together in order to have the government recognise them as people and to give them a proper burial. But the creature called Whatsitsname comes to life and goes on a killing spree, first for revenge and then simply because it needs fresh flesh to stay alive, "aided" by a varied cast of followers with contradictory motives which soon brought them into conflict. I thought this was a brilliant allegory for occupied Iraq at the macro level whilst specifically highlighting the impacts of the violence at the microlevel in Hadi's Al-Batween neighbourhood. There are more layers to this novel, but for me, its strength lay in its seamless transfer of the Frankenstein tropes to Baghdad of the early 2000s and the pertinent social and political commentary that resulted.

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bashsbooks's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I must confess, I was never a huge fan of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. I reread it over and over again in high school and college, and I could never get into it. Something about the text was too dense and archaic for me to connect to - which is not normally a problem I have with classics.

When I came across Frankenstein in Baghbad, I thought the concept of a surrealist look into early Iraq War era Baghdad was an interesting concept, but I was skeptical that I'd find the same stumbling blocks with this version as the original. After all, it takes place in a time and setting very different from my own, just like Shelley's original.

But Saadawi's work is different. I realized pretty quickly that this book is much, much closer to my time and place than I thought it would be. It demonstrates, with an unparalleled hand for metaphor, the monster that is the cycle of revenge which makes up the wheels of war.

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catsbreadbikes's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Not exactly my genre, so the ot didn't move me as much as i thought it would, but i found the characters compelling and well-written

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delainey5's review

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

im not sure that I understand the ending

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jillaay_h's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

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sofipitch's review

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dark reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Weird little book which is very interested in good and evil and more the lack of a clear distinction between the two. The Whatsitsname beginning it's killing spree in what seems like justified revenge only to kill plenty of innocent civilians to keep itself alive is particularly salient rn

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