Persisting Souls in a Persisting Myth: Appropriation and Transmigration in Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad (2013)

In Frankenstein in Baghdad, Ahmed Saadawi reintroduces the soul which was strikingly missing from Mary Shelley’s secular tale. Set in contemporary Baghdad, described as a place where daily attacks lead to numerous deaths and unidentified body parts, but also as a multi-faith city with a rich religious life, the novel elaborates on the traditional pattern of the wandering soul seeking a final resting place. Through his rewriting of the Creature, Saadawi exposes the absurdity of the cycle of violence, and explores the wounds of Iraqi society as well as the threat of political and religious chaos. The question which haunts the pages of the novel is ultimately that of the possibility for Iraq to find its soul—in the sense of unity—as a nation.