Ahmed Saadawi

Saadawi worked as a BBC correspondent in Baghdad through the worst years of the Iraqi insurgency. His novel Frankenstein fi Baghdad (2013) is set in occupation-era Baghdad: a junk-dealer in the Bataween district sews together body parts collected from the streets after suicide bombings, intending to give them a proper burial — and the resulting composite man, made of the bodies of Sunnis, Shi'a, Christians, and foreigners, climbs off the table to take revenge on the killers of every part of itself.

The novel won the IPAF in 2014, was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2018 in Jonathan Wright's English translation, and made Saadawi the most-discussed young Iraqi novelist in the Arab world. His later books — Bab al-Tabbasha (2018), The Door of the Lighthouse (2022) — continue his exploration of Baghdad as a city that refuses to settle.