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Frankenstein in Baghdad
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
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Frankenstein in Baghdad
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Publisher's Summary
Man Booker International Prize finalist
“Brave and ingenious.” (The New York Times)
“Gripping, darkly humorous...profound.” (Phil Klay, best-selling author and National Book Award winner for Redeployment)
“Extraordinary.... A devastating but essential read.” (Kevin Powers, best-selling author and National Book Award finalist for The Yellow Birds)
From the rubble-strewn streets of U.S.-occupied Baghdad, Hadi — a scavenger and an oddball fixture at a local café — 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 to give them 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 realizes he’s created a monster, one that needs human flesh to survive — first from the guilty, and then from anyone in its path.
A prizewinning novel by “Baghdad’s new literary star” (The New York Times), Frankenstein in Baghdad captures with white-knuckle horror and black humor the surreal reality of contemporary Iraq.
What the critics say
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What listeners say about Frankenstein in Baghdad
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Marcella Cooper
- 2023-08-14
Great story based on a classic
The historical context of the story adds to its power. It was really interesting to see the twists and turns with nods to the classic Frankenstein but creating something new.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Nora Ohanjanians
- 2018-06-21
A Tragicomedy on War
I liked Frankenstein in Baghdad because it’s written by a Baghdad resident about Bagdad after the invasion of the US. Most books we read about the non English speaking world are written by English speaking authors. This book is written by an Iraqi in Arabic and so is an authentic view. The translation is very fluent.
I liked it because it has magic realism. Ghosts talk to each other. Corpses and paintings come alive and a whole lot of weird stuff happens. It paints a vivid picture of the chaos, carnage, horrors and absurdity of war, but it’s easily readable and digestible because it mixes in a healthy dose of humor.
I also liked it because it’s philosophical. But the author, Ahmed Saadawi doesn’t dictate his philosophy. His third person narrator is objective and detached. Violence although omnipresent is impartial and impersonal. His characters are realistically a mix of positive and negative traits. As one of the characters says, “There are no innocents who are completely innocent and criminals who are completely criminal.”
I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys learning about new places and likes a good story.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Ali from the Hunted Shelves
- 2019-12-25
A story that needed to be told but could’ve been done better
This is an Honest review you might not agree with my opinion but that’s why it’s mine 😊
(My review is based on the English version only)
This book is a mixed bag for me. I absolutely feel proud and happy to read a novel by an Iraqi novelist. The setting of the novel is nostalgic yet painfully vivid since I have lived and familiar with the streets of Baghdad and familiar with the horrifying actions from bombs to shattered meet all over the streets I get how horrific and terrifying it is and I am glad that Ahmed Saadawi have shared this image raw and unfiltered And why it should be since it’s the truth we live in.
I love the concept of the story and I love the metaphors in this story and I love how the Iraqi flavour is evidence in the story the raw pain and sadness. However I have to be honest here.
The pace of the story flys buy so fast it’s a good thing and a bad thing at the same time. I was hoping for more descriptive scenes to soak me inside the story. I need the story to be slow at some points to see what’s really happening.
The format of the story is a bit messy to me and I didn’t enjoy the chaotic jumping in between characters and events. The mystery could’ve played out much better in my opinion.
Also why all the female characters are portrait horribly? Is it to reflect on how the Iraqi society look at women? If so, well it was not clear at all. All women in this book are mad or prostitute or looked at as sex object. It reflects the misogynistic society in Iraq but it’s done poorly sorry 😐
Not that I am against drinking because god knows I love it 😻 BUT drinking was portrayed as if it is a socially acceptable drink while I know for fact is not as easy and common as it is In this book. It would have loved to see the struggle for a man to get a drink or show the shame of hiding the smell of drink because that’s more believe for the society over there let’s be honest. Maybe Ahmed Saadawi wanted to Appeal to the western audience which I believe it’s a wrong way to do it because you can win a wider audience by painting am authentic image because that’s what people wants to see.
All in all I liked the book and I think it’s a cool story but it’s not a story I would reread anytime soon maybe in the far future to see If I read it differently then
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