"Frankenstein in Baghdad" by Ahmed Saadawi (BR)

[Silvana]

Another BR with me and Sarah!

Some accolades:
Arthur C. Clarke Award Nominee (2019) - against equally interesting nominees
International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) (2014) - now that's interesting.
Man Booker International Prize Nominee (2018) - so, it's literary?

Who's in? Let the roll call begins....

[Arthur]

Totally love this book, - dark, funny, and scary with some great insights into the real horrors of civillian life in post Desert Storm Baghdad

[Silvana]

That is nice to hear, Arthur! I hope you could stop by sometime during our reading period and comment whenever

[Arthur]

Will try, my review of the book is on another site, Mylot, so can't reproduce it here at present

[Kaa]

I'm in! I'm always interested to read more Arabic fiction, especially spec fic.

[Silvana]

I plan to read the book this weekend. Got at least one nonfic to finish.

[Silvana]

@Kaa,have you read others? Any recommendation?

[Kaa]

I'm not sure I ever have read any Arabic spec fic before - maybe some bordering on magical realism, but I can't remember for sure. I'm hoping to read The Queue soon. A few non-sff books that stand out are Gate of the Sun by Elias Khoury, Guapa by Saleem Haddad, and Woman at Point Zero by Nawal el Saadawi.

[Anna]

Heads up that The Queue is very low on the SFF aspect, but I thought it was interesting!

Iraq + 100: The First Anthology of Science Fiction to Have Emerged from Iraq is speculative and there is some scifi in there too, but I personally found it very hard to read. You'll need something extremely fluffy to balance things out.

Utopia was horrific, not only dystopian, but gory.

I can't remember if I've read others, but I feel like it's all very depressing :/

[Silvana]

Just started, sorry I am a bit late.

Up to chapter 2 and enjoying the story so far. I liked that the current POV was an old woman, though from the book description it seems the main one would be a guy.

[Kaa]

I'm just starting, too! I like the framing of the story, and I also enjoyed that the main POV in the first chapter was the old woman.

[Joelle.P.S]

I'll jump into the book in a few days: I've been distracted by 3 IRL bookclubs all this week! 1 is Frankissstein: A Love Story by Jeanette Winterson, so I look forward to going from that to Frankenstein in Baghdad. :-D

[Silvana]

Welcome to Baghdad, Joelle!

25% and I am still liking it, easy to read and always great to read this kind of story/history from another perspective. The characters felt real, aside from the Frankenstein aspects (which was quite unique if I may say) it almost like reading a nonfiction book or something.

Reading about (view spoiler)[The dead hotel guard gave me the creep since I was reminded of the Marriott bombing in Jakarta years ago. (hide spoiler)]

[Silvana]

45%

(view spoiler)[
I wish we have more closer interaction with Frankie - I am just gonna call him that - than just hearsays or eye witness accounts.
Wonder how he chose his victims, aside from the Baath party guy since he was clearly blamed by the old lady for the loss of her son.

I hope we got a narrative POV from Frankie, like what we got from the original novel, learning to speak, scaring people away and so on. (hide spoiler)]

[Joelle.P.S]

I finally got started yesterday and the early chapters are very intriguing! I'm eager to read more and then open these enticing spoiler tags. :-D

[Silvana]

57%

I got what I wished for!

(view spoiler)[the Whatsitsname chapter is awesome. (hide spoiler)]

[Joelle.P.S]

I just reached 45%, so I read that spoiler, & I totally agree, so now I'm totally looking forward to 57%. :-)

[Silvana]

I finished it. I really liked it but I wished (view spoiler)[Frankie got more portion. Here it seems that he's a background character despite being soooo interesting and intelligent like the original version.

I am not really into Mahmoud's POV tbh, he's kind of annoying and guileless, and would prefer the other POVs. (hide spoiler)]

Also what I liked was the immersive, realistic urban environment and people living in it. This is a great intro to Arabic SFF for me :)

[Joelle.P.S]

Silvana wrote: "I finished it. I really liked it but I wished..."

Ditto! :-)

[Kaa]

I finally finished this a couple days ago, and I completely agree with Silvana's thoughts about the end. I thought the setting and characters were incredible, and (view spoiler)[the placement of the Frankenstein story in post-invasion Baghdad raised a lot of really interesting ideas and themes.

But I would have liked much more time with Frankie (I'm going to borrow your name, Silvana!), as it seemed there was so much potential to further explore his story and the stories of his followers. I was also intrigued by the astrologers at the Tracking and Pursuit Department. Mahmoud, on the other hand, I found a bit boring - there was nothing about his story that felt very unique or surprising. (hide spoiler)]

[Silvana]

Glad you liked it, Kaa. The book deserves all the accolades.