83 Books Like Frankenstein in Baghdad

This may be considered an odd choice on the surface, given the true events of the Trojan War. This was also another I initially struggled with. Nevertheless, despite the factual elements, it’s viewed as one of the earliest epic fantasies in Western literature, along with The Odyssey, which came after.

Centered on just a few days of the ten-year siege of Troy, the lives of humans and their gods are intricately linked. It is one of the earliest examples of pathos with much sympathy actually lying with the enemies, the Trojans, a people based in Asia Minor, and their allies from all over the region. Outside the gods, it also references monsters such as Bellerophon, the Gorgon, and centaurs, with the gods often used as a plot device to refract the emotions and flaws of the characters.

The world-building is vivid and rich in dactylic hexameter, a rhythmic style.… show more.

Reading Graves’ biography, I get the sense of not just his wry humour but of his enduring pain. When he covers his First World War service, his jokes are cracked out of exasperation at the orders he receives that led to a succession of “bloody balls-ups,” and retold through a wince.

Graves’ biography has been described as “a version of events that told the poetic truth about his experiences…rather than being primarily fact-driven.” I believe all biographies are a form of fiction as our own memories are more often a product of our imagination than photographic recall.

Graves’ poetic retelling allows a more universal resonance beyond the trenches of the Somme than if he just stuck to the facts of that time and place, and resonated more for me because of this. 

I’m a huge fan of satire, as I believe it can inform and make you think critically, as well as being wildly entertaining.

I think Catch-22 is one of the most perfect satires about the absurdity and tragedy of war. I’m not the fastest reader, but Heller’s dialogue, humor, and sharp observations of the human condition under the perversion of war had me turning the pages quickly. 

What did the Iraq War look like from the perspective of Iraqis? In most accounts of the Iraq War, Iraqis only feature as terrorists or victims. This book explains how Iraqis felt about the invasion of the country; what relations were like between returning exiles and those who had remained in Iraq all along; and the hopes that Iraqis had for their country. It is really well written and engaging.

In To Start a War, Robert Draper investigates how it was that the US came to invade Iraq in 2003. A gifted writer, he reveals the paranoia and fear that led to the collecting of ‘intelligence’ that confirmed the biases of senior US officials – but which was often fabricated and false. 

Over the past forty-plus years, the Middle East has seen more than its due of wars and chaos. Kim Ghattas, a Lebanese journalist who currently writes for The Atlantic, writes in Black Wave of the impact throughout the Middle East of three heavy-duty events—the fall of the Shah of Iran and his replacement by Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Republic, the attack on the Grand Mosque of Mecca by a Saudi Arabian fundamentalist, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and gives a sense of the why and the how behind the events she documents.

Ghattas tracks the impact of these events throughout Iran and Afghanistan but also in Pakistan, Lebanon, Iraq, and Egypt. She handles the sheer volume of material by focusing on the repression of regimes and the ideologies they represent as seen through the voices of novelists, journalists, intellectuals, and religious figures. Her account emphasizes issues often seen as… show more.

Kanan is an Iraqi exile who was very supportive of the US invasion of Iraq. In The Rope, he provides a fictional account of what happened in the country, placing responsibility for the rise of sectarianism and the descent into civil war at the feet of Iraqi Shia leaders. It’s a brave and honest book. 

Out of all the war fiction and nonfiction I have read, this is the one book I wish I had read before deploying to Iraq as a soldier.

Lewis captures the post-invasion chaos, as the war-fighting military struggles to define its new mission as an occupying force, the farcical situations that arise through deep cultural misunderstandings between occupier and occupied, and the suffering and resourcefulness of the local population.

He is also an elegant writer who, like many of the best war writers, finds humour and intense tragedy in the extremes between the absurd and the sublime he encounters.

This compelling history of the U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Division’s armored spearhead into Baghdad details the coup de main that broke the Saddam’s regime’s grip on Iraq. Rich with exploits of individual soldiers, tank operations, and combat this nonfiction work relates the initial success in the war when victory seemed obtainable in months not years. I thoroughly enjoy this history because it illustrates the early war’s events accurately without politicized narrative and details just how daring and complicated this decisive attack was. If more people read this history, then our society could remember and have a fairer discourse on the Iraq War.

First, I need to explain that the title of this book is deceptive as Riverbend, an Iraqi tech expert, is a well-educated young woman, not a girl. The book is taken from her blog, written from August 2003 through September 2004, and details the changes that war between Saddam Hussein and American forces brings to Iraq.

I lived in the US during these years and followed the news closely as the US organized and launched its attack on Saddam Hussein’s regime with “shock and awe”. However, Riverbend’s account taught me far more than all the media accounts. Her formerly quiet life as a computer tech ends as a woman is no longer allowed to come into the office, or even be safely seen on the street. Almost every page contains contrasts of Iraqi everyday life as lived by her family with the changes the invasion brings—changes no U.S. reader was… show more.