# Frankenstein in Baghdad

**Ahmed Saadawi**

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International Booker Prize finalist

Winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction

“Brave and ingenious.” —The New York Times  
“Gripping, darkly humorous . . . profound.” —Phil Klay, bestselling author and National Book Award winner for _Redeployment_  
“Extraordinary . . . A devastating but essential read.” —Kevin Powers, bestselling 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.

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Books mentioned:
- _The Black Girl Survives in This One_, edited by Desiree S. Evans and Saraciea J. Fennell
- _Frankenstein in Baghdad_ by Ahmed Saadawi, translated by Jonathan Wright
- _The Midnight Shift_ by Cheon Seon-ran, translated by Gene Png