3.5 rounded up to 4

Phil Klay, a National Book Award winner, summed up 'Frankenstein in Baghdad (FIB) as: "a profound exploration of the terrible logic of violence and vengeance."

Frankly, in some ways the review could just end there; that is indeed exactly what this novel is. But this could describe so many different stories. 'Revenge is bad, actually,' has been worming its way ever more into media discourse, resulting in a slew of antagonists in both film and books who are motivated by wanting to get even, and a slew of corresponding protagonists who have to take them down, suggesting to the audience that even if it's understandable or relatable, retribution makes villains of us all.

So what makes this version of that message worth picking up, especially something with a title that wouldn't be out of place in a lineup with 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies'?

"Every age has the vampire it needs" (I feel like I quote this an obnoxious amount, but it really does apply so often--trust me!). Nina Auerbach was right about vampires, and clearly Saadawi feels the same about Frankenstein -- and he's right too.

Set during the Iraq war, but refreshingly (at least to this American reader) from the perspective of people in Baghdad living under US occupation and stuck between the Americans and "the terrorists"-- a dichotomy Saadawi sets up early on

...there were two fronts now, Mahmoud said to himself-- the Americans and the government on one side, the terrorists and the various anti-government militias on the other. In fact, "terrorist" was the term used for everyone who was against the government and the Americans (80)

Pretty on the nose the stuff. Normally, I'd be a bit harsh on an author being so transparent and dismiss it as lazy. But there is one other reason an author may lay it on thick: not trusting their readers to 'get it.'

I'd normally be pretty critical of this too, but considering how much jingoism Americans get pumped into us from the time we're capable of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, and how much of it we export, I'll give Saadawi a pass and assume he really was worried that Western readers would otherwise skip over the not so thin line between colonialism and terrorism.

This leads us to Frankenstein. Why choose that story to retell? Well, because it's kind of a perfect reference. Just like the original story grapples with questions like 'who is the monster?' and 'is revenge moral?' so too does FIB, but rather than just give us a lame remake, Saadawi raises the stakes from interpersonal conflict to war.

Rather than the body parts making up our titular zombie being nothing more than a disturbing employment of body horror for the sake of it or simply a callback to the original, Saadawi makes the fact that this monster is comprised of multiple corpses the point. These aren't just randomly pillaged arms and legs from a cemetery, these are the limbs of victims of the violence citizens of Baghdad are subjected to every day. And there's no mysterious science behind the creature's sentience: the soul of a man ripped apart in a bombing, unable to be given a proper burial, finds itself trapped in the only unoccupied body it can find.

Convinced it's the only way he can finally rest in peace, the spirit sets off on a mission to kill those responsible for the deaths of those whose body parts make up his shell. But there's a problem: each time he kills, a part of his body begins to decay and must be replaced, thus catching 'The Whatsitsname' (as his creator dubs him) in a vicious and seemingly inescapable cycle of murder. And increasingly as the story goes on, the Whatsitsname questions whether it's worth it

"There are no innocents who are completely innocent or criminals who are completely criminal." This sentence drilled its way into his head like a bullet out of the blue [...] This was the realization that would undermine his mission--because every criminal he had killed was also a victim. (214-215)

Saadawi crossing the finish line that Mary Shelley couldn't was honestly cathartic. He gets it: punitive justice is just revenge with a fancier name. It's the system that is bad, and going after any individual person is lopping a head off a hydra: chopping off one creates two, four, six, a million, a billion more. And not just more heads, but more hydras, each with its own ecosystem of heads.

Saadawi isn't here to spin us a happy ending, though, and none of the characters can break the wheel. The Americans are still there, pulling the strings on one side, and Al Qaeda pulling the strings on the other.

I don't know if I liked that or not. It's certainly depressingly true to life that on an individual level, changing systems can be impossible and all we can do is cut off our nose to spite our face by going after the small fry cogs in the machine rather than the ones running it. Tabloid magazines come to mind. Sure, it's punching up to mock celebrities, but what we really ought to be peeling back the curtain on is what enables the celebrity class, where wealth and power disparities come from. Something something capitalism bad, socialism good.

The implication of that critique in full is there, and Saadawi is careful to let the 'systems' peek around the edges of the plot (the whole thing starts off with a plot summary in the form of an American military report), which I thought was quite the crafty and effective choice. As we, the reader, get sucked into the interpersonal drama between different characters, it's easy to forget that the individual acts of villainy depend on the power structures propping them up. Only by dismantling or restructuring those power structures will the hydra be defeated.

The takeaway from all this is that, conceptually, this novel is fabulous. It's clever, it's nuanced, the fact that it's debatable who 'Frankenstein' is gives us a nice nod to the thematic preoccupations before we even open the book. Love it.

However (and this is largely just a personal problem) I felt like the pacing in the front half of the novel was incredibly slow, and given that the entire thing is only 281 pages long, that was quite the feat (derogatory). Maybe other readers wouldn't feel that way, and maybe I just missed something, but if I hadn't been so determined to finish reading it, I might have abandoned ship by the 50-page mark.

That being said: I'm so glad I stuck it out, because Saadawi really hits hard in the second half.

This would be a great book club choice -- so much to dissect and discuss.

Unless you're waiting for Hadi the junk dealer to sew your feet on, head over to your local library today and join Frankenstein in Baghdad.