Abstract
ABSTRACT In Frankenstein in Baghdad, Ahmed Saadawi chronicles the horrors of everyday life in Baghdad in the wake of the war and American invasion of Iraq in 2003. He weaves together actual reality and wild flights of imagination and in so doing, he fathoms out the extent of absurdity, cruelty and brutality in the violence-torn city. The present study argues that the novelist steeps his realistic narrative in the mystical, oracular and diverse cultural heritage of Mesopotamia and hence strikes a balance between a realistic view of life on the one hand and the marvelous/esoteric on the other. Saadawi brings into play the means offered by Magical Realism to place a horrific reality against phantasmal background in his semi-war narrative. The magical or marvelous operate on the levels of characters, setting as well as events, which have their counterparts in reality. The Frankenstein brought to existence by a nobody ends up typifying Christian creed in being a stray soul repulsed from hell and the Islamic in being a materialization of Satan. Further, the novel showcases the indulgence in witchcraft and clairvoyance as well as the nostalgia to the glamor of a wondrous golden past all at one go.
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