On Wednesday 14 February 2024, the Director General of Syriac Culture and Arts in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, Kaldo Ramzi Oghanna, received Iraqi writer and novelist Ahmed Saadawi and Syriac writer Nineb Lamassu, at the directorate’s building in Ankawa district centre, to discuss the project of translating the novel “Frankenstein in Baghdad” into the Syriac language.
The meeting witnessed an agreement to translate the Booker Prize-winning novel “Frankenstein in Baghdad” into Syriac with the support of the General Directorate of Syriac Culture and Arts and the efforts of writer Nineb Lamassu, who will supervise the preparation of the Syriac version of the novel.
This work is considered a new and distinguished addition to the work and activities of the General Directorate of Syriac Culture and Arts, the echo of which has reached the heart of the capital, Baghdad. After the completion of the project, it will provide the Syriac library with a valuable novel in the Syriac language, especially since its events revolve around topics of interest to Iraqi society with its various components and cultures.
It is worth noting that “Frankenstein in Baghdad”, a novel by Iraqi writer Ahmed Saadawi, was published in March 2013 by Al-Jamal Publications in Beirut, and has so far published 28,000 copies in 14 editions. It won the Arab Novel Prize for the year 2014, and the French GPI Prize for novels translated into French in 2017.
