The Missing Corpse in Contemporary Iraqi Fiction: Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad and Muhsin Al-Ramili’s Daughter of the Tigris

Abstract

This essay focuses on the trope of the missing corpse in two contemporary Iraqi novels: Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad (2013) and Muhsin al-Ramli’s Daughter of the Tigris (2019). Drawing mainly on critical work on the corpse and death studies as well as critical ideas on relics and hauntology the essay asks: What place does the missing corpse occupy in a body of contemporary literary outputs that have witnessed a significant engagement with the materiality of the dead body? How is the narrative of the absent corpse structured and framed? How is it experienced and accounted for? What forms and shapes replace the absent body? The essay argues that the missing corpse takes on an “absent presence” that haunts the narrative while the dead body’s very disappearance is compensated for through relics, surrogates, replacements, and repetitions. In conclusion, the essay contends that this absent presence further signals a haunted futurity that is entangled in Iraq’s history of violence but which, nonetheless, offers the potential for a radically new and democratic vision for the country’s future.