Frankenstein in Baghdad

Author: Ahmed Saadawi
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143128809
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
*International Booker Prize finalist* “Brave and ingenious.” —The New York Times “Gripping, darkly humorous . . . profound.” —Phil Klay, bestselling author and National Book Award winner for Redeployment “Extraordinary . . . A devastating but essential read.” —Kevin Powers, bestselling author and National Book Award finalist for The Yellow Birds From the rubble-strewn streets of U.S.-occupied Baghdad, Hadi—a scavenger and an oddball fixture at a local café—collects human body parts and stitches them together to create a corpse. His goal, he claims, is for the government to recognize the parts as people and to give them 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 realizes he’s created a monster, one that needs human flesh to survive—first from the guilty, and then from anyone in its path. A prizewinning novel by “Baghdad’s new literary star” (The New York Times), Frankenstein in Baghdad captures with white-knuckle horror and black humor the surreal reality of contemporary Iraq.

Frankenstein in Baghdad

Author: Ahmed Saadawi
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1786070618
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 185

Book Description
WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR ARABIC FICTION A SATIRICAL REIMAGINING OF MARY SHELLEY'S FRANKENSTEIN SET IN MODERN-DAY BAGHDAD, BRILLIANTLY CAPTURING THE HORROR OF A CITY AT WAR From the rubble-strewn streets of US-occupied Baghdad, Hadi collects body parts from the dead, which he stitches together to form a corpse. He claims he does it to force the government to recognise the parts as real people, and give them a proper burial. But when the corpse goes missing, a wave of eerie murders sweeps across the city, and reports stream in of a horrendous-looking, flesh-eating monster that cannot be killed. At first it's the guilty he attacks, but soon it's anyone who crosses his path... 'A remarkable book' Observer WINNER OF THE KITSCHIES GOLDEN TENTACLE AWARD SHORTLISTED FOR THE ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARD 2019

When I Hit You

Author: Meena Kandasamy
Publisher: Europa Editions
ISBN: 1609456009
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 161

Book Description
The widely acclaimed novel of an abused woman in India and her fight for freedom: “A triumph.” —The Guardian Named a Best Book of the Year by the Financial Times, the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, and the Observer Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction Longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize Shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize Based on the author’s own experience, When I Hit You follows the narrator as she falls in love with a university professor and agrees to be his wife. Soon, the newlywed experiences extreme violence at her husband’s hands and finds herself socially isolated. Yet hope keeps her alive. Writing becomes her salvation, a supreme act of defiance, in a harrowing yet fierce and funny novel that not only examines one woman’s battle against terror and loneliness but reminds us how fiction and stories can help us escape.

Baghdad Noir

Author: Muhsin al-Ramli
Publisher: Akashic Books
ISBN: 1617756547
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Book Description
This unique anthology of Iraqi noir fiction collects fourteen original stories of crime, conspiracy, regret, and revenge in the capital of Iraq. The centuries-old city of Baghdad has known many rulers, many troubles, and many crimes. But while most Iraqis would agree that their life has always been noir, there has not been a literary tradition to capture this aspect of the culture. By commissioning the fourteen stories collected here—most by Iraqi writers, all by authors familiar with Baghdad—editor Samuel Shimon and Akashic Books have created what may be the first anthology of Iraqi crime fiction ever assembled. Here you will read of life in Baghdad both during and after the Saddam Hussein era, with stories of fear in the shadow of a ruthless dictator; kidnappings in the time of U.S. occupation; detectives who investigate political conspiracies; and tales of revenge, assassination, mental illness, and family struggle in the war-torn City of Peace. Baghdad Noir includes brand-new stories by Sinan Antoon, Ali Bader, Mohammed Alwan Jabr, Nassif Falak, Dheya al-Khalidi, Hussain al-Mozany, Layla Qasrany, Hayet Raies, Muhsin al-Ramli, Ahmed Saadawi, Hadia Said, Salima Salih, Salar Abdoh, and Roy Scranton.

The Baghdad Clock

Author: Shahad Al Rawi
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1786073234
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Book Description
Shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction 2018 This number one best-selling title in Iraq, Dubai, and the UAE is a heart-rending tale of two girls growing up in war-torn Baghdad Baghdad, 1991. The Gulf War is raging. Two girls, hiding in an air raid shelter, tell stories to keep the fear and the darkness at bay, and a deep friendship is born. But as the bombs continue to fall and friends begin to flee the country, the girls must face the fact that their lives will never be the same again. This poignant debut novel reveals just what it's like to grow up in a city that is slowly disappearing in front of your eyes, and how in the toughest times, children can build up the greatest resilience.

The Familiar Dark

Author: Amy Engel
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1524746010
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
One of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2020 (Mystery/Thriller) "From its gripping beginning to its sobering finale, Amy Engel's The Familiar Dark never fails to enthrall with surprising twists."–Associated Press A spellbinding story of a mother with nothing left to lose who sets out on an all-consuming quest for justice after her daughter is murdered on the town playground. Sometimes the answers are worse than the questions. Sometimes it's better not to know. Set in the poorest part of the Missouri Ozarks, in a small town with big secrets, The Familiar Dark opens with a murder. Eve Taggert, desperate with grief over losing her daughter, takes it upon herself to find out the truth about what happened. Eve is no stranger to the dark side of life, having been raised by a hard-edged mother whose lessons Eve tried not to pass on to her own daughter. But Eve may need her mother's cruel brand of strength if she's going to face the reality about her daughter's death and about her own true nature. Her quest for justice takes her from the seedy underbelly of town to the quiet woods and, most frighteningly, back to her mother's trailer for a final lesson. The Familiar Dark is a story about the bonds of family—women doing the best they can for their daughters in dire circumstances—as well as a story about how even the darkest and most terrifying of places can provide the comfort of home.

Gris Grimly's Frankenstein

Author: Mary Shelley
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
ISBN: 9780061862977
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 193

Book Description
Retells, in graphic novel format, Mary Shelley's classic tale of a monster, assembled by a scientist from parts of dead bodies, who develops a mind of his own as he learns to loathe himself and hate his creator.

Frankissstein

Author: Jeanette Winterson
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN: 0802129501
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
This “thought-provoking and . . . unabashedly entertaining . . . novel defies conventional expectations and exists, brilliantly and defiantly, on its own terms” (Sarah Lotz, New York Times Book Review). Lake Geneva, 1816. Nineteen-year-old Mary Shelley is inspired to write a story about a scientist who creates a new life-form. In Brexit Britain, a young transgender doctor called Ry is falling in love with Victor Stein, a celebrated professor leading the public debate around AI and carrying out some experiments of his own in a vast underground network of tunnels. Meanwhile, Ron Lord, just divorced and living with his mom again, is set to make his fortune launching a new generation of sex dolls. Across the Atlantic, in Phoenix, Arizona, a cryogenics facility houses dozens of bodies of men and women who are medically and legally dead . . . but waiting to return to life. Since her astonishing debut Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson has achieved worldwide acclaim as “one of the most daring and inventive writers of our time” (Elle). In Frankissstein, she shares an audacious love story that weaves together disparate lives into an exploration of transhumanism, artificial intelligence, and queer love. Longlisted for the Booker Prize

Gothic for Girls

Author: Julia Round
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496824474
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Book Description
Winner of the 2019 Broken Frontier Award for Best Book on Comics Today fans still remember and love the British girls’ comic Misty for its bold visuals and narrative complexities. Yet its unique history has drawn little critical attention. Bridging this scholarly gap, Julia Round presents a comprehensive cultural history and detailed discussion of the comic, preserving both the inception and development of this important publication as well as its stories. Misty ran for 101 issues as a stand-alone publication between 1978 and 1980 and then four more years as part of Tammy. It was a hugely successful anthology comic containing one-shot and serialized stories of supernatural horror and fantasy aimed at girls and young women and featuring work by writers and artists who dominated British comics such as Pat Mills, Malcolm Shaw, and John Armstrong, as well as celebrated European artists. To this day, Misty remains notable for its daring and sophisticated stories, strong female characters, innovative page layouts, and big visuals. In the first book on this topic, Round closely analyzes Misty’s content, including its creation and production, its cultural and historical context, key influences, and the comic itself. Largely based on Round’s own archival research, the study also draws on interviews with many of the key creators involved in this comic, including Pat Mills, Wilf Prigmore, and its art editorial team Jack Cunningham and Ted Andrews, who have never previously spoken about their work. Richly illustrated with previously unpublished photos, scripts, and letters, this book uses Misty as a lens to explore the use of Gothic themes and symbols in girls’ comics and other media. It surveys existing work on childhood and Gothic and offers a working definition of Gothic for Girls, a subgenre which challenges and instructs readers in a number of ways.

The Iraqi Christ

Author: Hassan Blasim
Publisher: Comma Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 172

Book Description
** WINNER OF THE ENGLISH PEN WRITERS IN TRANSLATION AWARD ** **LONG-LISTED FOR THE 2013 FRANK O'CONNOR INTERNATIONAL SHORT STORY AWARD** **BOOK OF THE MONTH IN THE SKINNY** A soldier with the ability to predict the future finds himself blackmailed by an insurgent into the ultimate act of terror… A deviser of crosswords survives a car-bomb attack, only to discover he is now haunted by one of its victims… Fleeing a robbery, a Baghdad shopkeeper falls into a deep hole, at the bottom of which sits a djinni and the corpse of a soldier from a completely different war… From legends of the desert to horrors of the forest, Blasim’s stories blend the fantastic with the everyday, the surreal with the all-too-real. Taking his cues from Kafka, his prose shines a dazzling light into the dark absurdities of Iraq’s recent past and the torments of its countless refugees. The subject of this, his second collection, is primarily trauma and the curious strategies human beings adopt to process it (including, of course, fiction). The result is a masterclass in metaphor – a new kind of story-telling, forged in the crucible of war, and just as shocking. 'At first, you receive Blasim with the kind of shocked applause you’d award a fairly transgressive stand-up. You’re quite elated. Then you stop reading it at bedtime. At his best, Blasim produces a corrosive mixture of broken lyricism, bitter irony and hyper-realism which topples into the fantastic and the quotidian in the same reading moment.' – M John Harrison 'Perhaps the best writer of Arabic fiction alive...' – The Guardian. 'Bolaño-esque in its visceral exuberance, and also Borgesian in its gnomic complexity... a master of metaphor.' – The Guardian.