Frankenstein in Baghdad

From the rubble-strewn streets of US-occupied Baghdad, Hadi – a scavenger and an oddball fixture at the local caf – collects human body parts and stitches them together to create a corpse. His goal, he claims, is for the government to recognise the parts as people and to give them a 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 realises he’s created a monster, one that needs human flesh to survive. As the violence escalates and Hadi’s acquaintances – a journalist, a government worker, a lonely older woman – become involved, the Whatsitsname and the havoc it wreaks assume a magnitude far greater than anyone could have imagined.

An extraordinary achievement, at once horrific and blackly humorous, Frankenstein in Baghdad captures the surreal reality of contemporary Baghdad.