Ahmed Saadawi

Ahmed Saadawi is an Iraqi novelist, poet, screenwriter, and visual artist born in 1973 in Baghdad. He is one of the most important voices in contemporary Iraqi and Arab literature, known for fiction that engages directly with the violence and trauma of post-invasion Iraq with both realism and dark fantasy. He continues to live and work in Baghdad. Saadawi is the author of several novels before his breakthrough, including Insan Nadratan ma Yura (A Man Rarely Seen, 2004). Frankenstein in Baghdad (Frankenstein fi Baghdad, 2013), his IPAF-winning novel, became a sensation: set in the sectarian violence of post-invasion Baghdad, it follows a junk dealer who assembles a creature from the body parts of bombing victims, only for the creature to come to life seeking vengeance. The novel uses the monster as a metaphor for the cycle of violence consuming Iraqi society. Frankenstein in Baghdad was longlisted for the International Booker Prize after being translated into English by Jonathan Wright. The novel has been praised as one of the most powerful fictional responses to the Iraq War and its aftermath. Saadawi continues to write and remains a courageous voice for Iraqi literary culture in a deeply difficult environment.