This paper explores the theme of revenge in Ahmed Saadawi’s novel Frankenstein in Baghdad and its implications from a postcolonial perspective. Saadawi’s narrative tackles the consequences of revenge within a colonized society struggling with identity reconstruction. Revenge is not portrayed as a liberating and just act but rather as a vicious and futile cycle that only produces more oppression, darkness, and loss. Saadawi intertwines the notions of colonizer, colonized, oppression, and revenge to highlight how the oppressed can become oppressors in turn, and thus the cycle continues. Ultimately, Saadawi seems to warn against revenge in a postcolonial context, on both individual and national levels, as it only reproduces the colonial trauma. Frankenstein in Baghdad is situated within a discourse on trauma and (national) identity, and thus its postcoloniality extends also to notions of identity. In a contemporary landscape troubled by questions of identity and agency, Frankenstein in Baghdad is a highly relevant and necessary text.    Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad presents a narrative in which construction becomes creation, and creation becomes a monster. Hadi, the protagonist, stitches together dead body parts collected from the streets of post-war Baghdad, hoping to give the victims a kind of life after death. Instead, this new creature, dubbed Whatsitsname, takes vengeance on those responsible for his parts’ deaths, leading the narrative into a horror story. On a closer reading, Whatsitsname’s quest for revenge intertwines with the other characters’ narratives, who also become monsters after seeking vengeance. The narrative expresses a concern with the consequences of revenge but knows a complexity of the necessity of revenge.

Revenge, Frankenstein in Baghdad, A Postcolonial

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