A documentary account and fiction in Ahmed Saadawi's novel ‘Frankenstein in Baghdad’

The article analyzes the correlation between a documentary account and fiction in the novel Frankenstein in Baghdad written by the Iraqi author Ahmed Saadawi in 2013. The novel depicts the consequences of American invasion of Iraq in 2003. In recent decades, the topic of war and its tragic consequences has played a significant role in contemporary Iraqi literature, which resulted in the emergence of literary works devoted to it. Ahmed Saadawi, being a real witness to military conflicts which occurred in Iraq after the invasion in 2003, created a true to life novel, which won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2014. In fact, he was the first Iraqi writer to receive this prize. The purpose of the study is to consider how the correlation between a documentary account and fiction in a literary work can convey the objective truth. Frankenstein, the main fantasy character of the novel, possesses both ugly and sublime features, which makes him a rather grotesque creature. Not only does it make the novel more vivid and impressive, but it also emphasizes the atmosphere of chaos and uncertainty in which thousands of Iraqi citizens live. Throughout the novel, Ahmed Saadawi puts fictional and real facts on an equal footing, which helps him to demonstrate the current situation from an unusual angle. Two opposite styles, realistic fiction and fantasy, are interconnected and illustrate the consistency of style and its ability to represent the author’s idea and his writing style. Realistic fiction is proven to be dominant in the novel Frankenstein in Baghdad. This supports the idea of its documentary basis. The ideas of justice and retaliation go through the whole novel, making readers sympathize with Iraqi civilians, who have experienced all the horrors of the military conflict. The article attempts to study the problem of correlation between documentary narration and fiction in the context of real locations and historical events. We have revealed the author’s opinion on the ongoing events, which proves the academic novelty of our research theme. In the study were applied cultural-historical and comparative-historical methods.