'Frankenstein in Baghdad' to come to life in film
Iraqi novelist Ahmed Saadawi's award-winning novel "Frankenstein in Baghdad" is to become a film.
BAGHDAD — Iraqi writer Ahmed Saadawi signed a contract with a British production company that will adapt his award-winning novel “Frankenstein in Baghdad" into a film.
Saadawi has received several offers to adapt his rich story into a series, play or film since his book won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2014. While he had refused such offers in the past, he now seems happy to be turning his novel into a film.
The novel, published in 2013 by Manshurat al-Jamal and translated into several languages, revolves around Hadi al-Attag, a vendor of antiques who collects limbs from victims of the bombings that hit Baghdad in 2005. He uses the limbs to create a strange creature. The creature seeks revenge from those who carried out the massacres.
The novel addresses the rampant violence in Iraq, the bad mechanisms used to address violence as well as the fate of religious minorities in the country. It talks in detail about the security, political and social situation in Iraq in 2005-2006.
