First published 2019
In Baghdad after the second Iraq War, American troops still patrol the streets littered with body parts from bombings and violence. A rag collector walks these dangerous roads, gathering scattered human remains he finds along his route. He decides to stitch these fragments together into a complete corpse so he can give the anonymous dead a proper burial. The body unexpectedly comes to life, transforming into a creature that disrupts an entire neighborhood. An elderly woman continues her years-long wait for her son who vanished during the Iran-Iraq War. A greedy hotel owner schemes to buy up every building on the block. A young journalist tries to forget a lost love while tracking down this strange living corpse. The reanimated being moves through their world, forcing each resident to confront what the endless cycle of war has done to their community. Saadawi creates a biting satire of how ordinary people survive in a city where death and absurdity have become routine.
Genres: fiction, satire, literary-fiction, historical-fiction, magical-realism, 21st-century
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Baghdad, Iraq
Period: 21st Century, Iraq War
328 pages · Paperback · Libros del Asteroide
Content warnings: death, graphic-violence, war