Enter Ghost

by Isabella Hammad

A bold, evocative new novel from the Sue Kaufman, Betty Trask and Plimpton Prize Award winner Isabella Hammad that follows actress Sonia as she returns to Palestine and takes a role in a West Bank production of Hamlet

After years away from her family’s homeland, and reeling from a disastrous love affair, actress Sonia Nasir returns to Haifa to visit her older sister Haneen. This is her first trip back since the second intifada and the deaths of their grandparents: while Haneen made a life here commuting to Tel Aviv to teach at the university, Sonia stayed in London to focus on her acting career and now dissolute marriage. On her return, she finds her relationship to Palestine is fragile, both bone-deep and new.

At Haneen’s, Sonia meets the charismatic and candid Mariam, a local director, and finds herself roped into a production of Hamlet in the West Bank. Sonia is soon rehearsing Gertude’s lines in classical Arabic and spending more time in Ramallah than in Haifa, along with a dedicated group of men from all over historic Palestine who, in spite of competing egos and priorities, each want to bring Shakespeare to that side of the wall. As opening night draws closer it becomes clear just how many violent obstacles stand before a troupe of Palestinian actors. Amidst it all, the life Sonia once knew starts to give way to the daunting, exhilarating possibility of finding a new self in her ancestral home.

A stunning rendering of present-day Palestine, Enter Ghost is a story of diaspora, displacement, and the connection to be found in family and shared resistance. Timely, thoughtful, and passionate, Isabella Hammad’s highly anticipated second novel is an exquisite feat, an unforgettable story of artistry under occupation.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Middle East, Historical Fiction, Book Club, Audiobook

336 pages, Hardcover

First published April 4, 2023

About the author

Hammad is the author of The Parisian and Enter Ghost.

Reviews

[emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

i first wanted to read this book in december of 2023, when i read sally rooney in conversation with its author.

since then, i've read countless articles and several novels and a few works of nonfiction on palestine, both out of a need to arm myself with the knowledge to argue with the people who take issue with my use of the word genocide and because there is so little i can do and so much i feel and reading about this suffering and sharing the books widely seems like some small responsibility.

all of that is to say that in the two years since i first heard of this book, i've only grown to need more and more from it. it lived up to those high expectations.

enter ghost follows an illicit palestinian production of HAMLET, deftly layering in shakespearean themes and eloquence to tell the story of the inequality, the burden of identity, the joy of shared culture, the painful history of palestine. the everyday nature of the violence and the surveillance and the cruel hand of colonization are omnipresent, and our cast of characters risks all of them to bring their play to their people. the juxtaposition of these daily horrors with the fulfillment and emotion of art make for a searing novel.

it's been three months now since i finished it, but i think of it often.

bottom line: free palestine 🇵🇸

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘To be or not to be,’ is one of the most commonly quoted lines of Shakespeare. A well loved soliloquy from Hamlet contemplating life or death, action or inaction, but ‘there’s the rub,’ as it also led to the Israeli military banning the play in 1989 during the First Intifada lest it inspire the Palestinian prisoners to ‘take arms against a sea of troubles / and by opposing end them.’ Shakespeare’s hauntingly complex tale of usurped sovereignty and the indignities of ‘the whips and scorns of time, / the oppressor’s wrong’ is ripe for metaphor of the Palestinian condition and so Hamlet once again returns to the West Bank in Isabella Hammad’s brilliant novel Enter Ghost. I am awestruck by how accomplished and assured this novel is—Hammad’s second novel following her 2019 The Parisian—one that begins already steeped in the anxieties of a border crossing interrogation as Sonia, an actress with both Dutch and Palestinian parentage, returns to Haifa and soon finds herself performing in a Palestinian production of Hamlet. Having been long removed from the region, Sonia finds herself like a ghost of Palestinian heritage now returned yet disconnected and unmoored from their struggles, especially in contrast with her academic and activist sister who has remained there. Having described herself as a ‘writer and political being formed by Palestine,’ Hammad uses her work as an avenue to examine and expose the violence of settlers and the suffering and silencing of Palestinians while making the reader consider alongside the characters if such witness through art is a form of political action or merely catharsis through acting. Amidst a story of political unrest that channels the rich history of Palestinian theater, Isabella Hammad’s Enter Ghost is as eloquent as it is evocative through explorations of identity and family in the context of a tumultuous history while weighing the role of art as political protest.

‘He’s saying, it’s a choice between life and death. But really…there’s a third way. You can be a ghost.’

Reading Enter Ghost is to traverse a fraught political history of violent displacement and grief upon a narrative of sublimity and well-written nuance. Hammad’s prose flows effortlessly and confidently, delivered like a seasoned veteran of the stage despite it only being her second novel. Her language cuts with a sharpness that manages to retain a softness to it while the story looms large like those of classic literature with a wealth of thematic investigations and sociopolitical commentary deftly packed into its engaging plot-line that ushers us along at a crisp pace. It’s very lovingly crafted and clever with an earnest attempt to portray the Palestinian condition as an identity where merely existing is connotatively viewed as politically threatening to the Israeli soldiers and settlers.

The novel draws on a deep history of the region where prior knowledge is useful yet not necessary as Hammad ensures the historical context is understood within the narrative. As Aristotle wrote in Poetics—thematicall imporant here—‘poetry is more philosophical and more serious than history; poetry utters universal truths, history particular statements,’ and Hammad attempts to examine the history through fictional lived experience picked up along the way instead of pausing for exposition to ensure it is approachable for any reader. There are some excellent textures to heighten this effect here, too. Hammad’s explanatory note at the end stating that text of Hamlet comes from the Arabic translation by Jabra Ibrahim Jabra which she ‘freely translated back into the English language.’ Knowing the actors are supposed to be delivering these lines in Arabic despite them being in English on the page, the discrepancies in lines of Hamlet here from Shakespearean original therefore read as if it is a translated work. Hammad does her best to place you amongst the characters and in the anxious uncertainties where every moment ‘felt like a scrap of newspaper dancing on the draught above a fire, constantly about to burn and vanish,’ and she succeeds at every turn.

‘This place revealed something about the whole world.’

While there is a delightfully dynamic cast here, such as Mariam the play director with her ‘straightforward, repugnant, magnetic light,’ the young pop-star Wael cast as Hamlet who fears his mannerisms ‘are from someone else…I don’t know who I am underneath,’ and the rest of the play cast, the narrator Sonia still takes center stage. Much of the novel finds her grappling with identity and joining Mariam’s play becomes a catalyst for a deeper understanding individually, culturally and even as a member of her own family. ‘Writing is, for me, a way of engaging with the world,’ Hammad said in an interview with Service 95 and in Sonia we see how acting is a similar engagement. The actors contemplate how Hamlet can metaphorically nudge the Palestinian condition—though Hammad ensures the reader does so to without calling specific attention to it though lines like ‘to me this country is a prison’ will inevitably register different when delivered by characters living in a place often referred to as the world's largest open air prison—and, as one often does when working in art, Sonia begins to reflect on how events and people in her life take on symbolic meaning. Such as the symbols of Palestine, or those of Israel.

‘The soldier is a sacred figure, an image in their ideology as olive trees are in ours. When they look at their soldiers, they see sons and daughters. When we look at their soldiers, our hearts also beat harder, although it is for different reasons.’

Or there is the recurring memory of Rashid, a boy she met as a child who’s ‘starvation was symbolic…as a general motif of prolonged suffering,’ and became a symbolic rallying cry to activism for her sister, Haneen. And then, of course, performing Hamlet, a play that had been banned by Israel, is a rather symbolic act.

‘No theatre group has ever performed without having one or two of its members in jail.’
—Palestinian politician Hanan Ashrawi, 1976

Palestinians have a long history of artistic expressions of protest. I would encourage anyone to read Isabella Hammad’s article in LitHub on this history, which begins with a discussion on the play Return to Palestine, performed in 2017 when this novel is set about a character who is likely the inspiration for Uncle Jad’s name in Enter Ghost. As the actor Faris mentions in the novel, 1970s Palestinian theater was full of political intent and while writing Enter Ghost, Hammad interviewed many former member of the theater troupe Balalin who were founded under François Abu Salem and referred to their art as ‘emotionally fulfilling,’ as ‘a very important milestone in the revolution, in the Palestinian resistance.’ Many of them were arrested or detained for their performances. While in the novel characters consider if they are acting politically or merely acting on the stage, Hammad discusses in her article why theater is a symbolically powerful form of protest and why it was often under attack by the Israeli military:

‘This hostility to theater perhaps had to do with its transitory nature: as a live, essentially unrepeatable art form, theater can be unpredictable and even volatile. It can incite action—the double meaning in the English word “act” is brought to life in the Palestinian context. It’s also an art form comprised of bodies occupying space. The backbone of the Israeli occupation is a military regime whose principal mechanism of power is the control of bodies in space.’

In Enter Ghost, we learn arts funding ‘counted as cooperation with people who desired the destruction of the Israeli state and was therefore treasonous.’ This effort to control and silence is everywhere and their play is being closely monitored under threat of being shut down, actors detained, and Mariam’s politician brother is on watch. Though, like Hamlet says, ‘the play is the thing by which I’ll catch the conscience of the King!’

‘Nothing is more flattering to an artist than the illusion that he is a secret revolutionary.’

As Shakespeare writes in another of his plays, King John, ‘O that my tongue were in the thunder’s mouth! / Then with a passion would I shake the world.’ Such is the desire of artists who use their art as symbols of protest or solidarity. Though throughout the novel Hammad confronts us with a question whether art in times of struggle is truly effective action or merely acting. Sonia struggles while watching a demonstration being put down by armed forces wondering that ‘the meaning of our Hamlet depended on this suffering…our play needed the protests, but the protests did not need our play.’ In a key scene, Mariam cites the value of political art in a way that is sure to inspire:

‘[W]hen you read a novel about the occupation and feel understood, or watch a film and feel seen, your anger, which is like a wound, is dressed for a brief time and you can go on enduring…feel connected to the other people in the room…a kind of flowering in the chest at this sight of your community’s resistance embalemd in art.’

In Aristotle’s Poetics catharsis is shown as a purging of emotions, a release of tension after the play and, following this, Mariam concludes with a despair for that play and a huge blow to those who aim for protest through art that ‘all of this means that in the end you, or at least the middle classes, are less likely to fight the fight because despair has been relieved.’ That the art is nothing but a ‘narcotic.’ Sonia’s exhaustion and silence on the matter leaves a silence for the reader to consider this and contemplate agreement or our own arguments as pushback. It is a brilliant moment that forces us to engage.

Let’s consider this more a moment. Brazilian anti-fascist theater maker Augusto Boal once wrote:

‘The poetics of Aristotle is the poetics of oppression: the world is known, perfect or about to be perfected, and all its values are imposed on the spectators, who passively delegate power to the characters to act and think in their place. In so doing the spectators purge themselves of their tragic flaw—that is, of something capable of changing society.’

Those who engage in artistic expression of politics want to make a difference, but are we really just patting ourselves on the back? In 1993, Susan Sontag went to Sarajevo to put on Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot and wrote

‘I was not under the illusion that going to Sarajevo to direct a play would make me useful in the way I could be if I were a doctor or a water systems engineer…But it was the only one of the three things I do—write, make films, and direct in the theater—which yields something that would exist only in Sarajevo, that would be made and consumed there.’

And even if ‘The artist may do no more than give us beauty, laughter, passion, surprise, and drama,’ as Howard Zinn wrote in Artists in Times of War, he also points out that ‘the artist is telling us what the world should be like, even if it isn’t that way now. The artist is taking us away from the moments of horror that we experience everyday by showing us what is possible.’ In a conversation with fellow author Sally Rooney (you should definitely read it HERE), Hammad states:

‘I don’t agree with Mariam there. But I think it’s misguided to believe a single work of art can, by itself, act quickly and significantly on the world; this seems like a category error.’

I’m reminded of the lines by Mahmoud Darwish that ‘A poem in a difficult time / is beautiful flowers in a cemetery’ The flowers are art that can’t take back death but make life beautiful nonetheless, but as he cautions earlier in the poem ‘If you ponder a rose for too long / you won’t budge in a storm.’ Hammad gives a good reminder that art is good, but it can’t be the only action. As poet Mohammed El-Kurd writes ‘ At a certain point, the metaphor tires. At a certain point, I’ll grab a brick.’ Hammad compares this idea with journalists, who Sonia think are ‘watching, to do nothing’ but reconsiders that ‘we needed the cameras. Half the power was in the recording, that the event was already being doubled and broadcast. Because of them, we were not only in Jerusalem, we were everywhere.’ Such is the heroism of Palestinian activist and journalist Janna Jihad Ayyad who, at the age of 7, began broadcasting the violence done to her communities on social media and of whom the Naomi Shihab Nye poetry collection The Tiny Journalist is about.

‘To remain human at this juncture is to remain in agony. Let us remain there: it is the more honest place from which to speak.’
--Isabella Hammad, Recognizing the Stranger

As Edward W. Said argues ‘the power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming and emerging is very important to culture and imperialism,’ and being able to narrate one’s own culture through art is important resistance. The attempts to silence the play in the novel is something not only occurring in the region but a struggle faced by Palestinians worldwide through the censorship of Palestinian writers and punishment of those who speak in defense of Palestine. In a recent interview for Tin House, Hammad addressed the censorship’s while calling out the hypocrisy of those who push back against calls for protecting Palestine under the guise of “free speech” in the US:

‘It’s a totally lopsided ideological element of American culture, that the highest good is free speech, rather than that free speech is a side product of a just political system... Obviously, it’s also completely hypocritical because it’s always free speech except for when it comes to Palestine.’

She goes on to critique how in the US battles over semantics and phrasing allows people to feel they’ve accomplished something without taking meaningful action. ‘It has to do with distance because they’re not close to the bombs,’ she states, which is something we see in Sonia in the novel. It isn’t until she is there amongst the violence and protests, where ‘a threat had materialised, of interrogation, of danger. Of dissolution, even,’ that she is able to truly understand and feel the horrors lived daily.

'I saw virtue in being true to myself, and to my shapeless inner turmoil. Or was that just another narrative I was spinning to comfort myself, in the face of what I lacked?'

While the original title of the novel was the final lines of Hamlet, ‘Go Bid the Soldiers Shoot,’ indicating Fortinbra’s soldiers would invade and mop up, Enter Ghost functions perfectly as there are many ghosts in the narrative. There is the way the Palestinians removed from their land are like ghosts to the settlers. ‘We haunt them,’ her father laughs, ‘they want to kill us but we will not die.’ There is the ghost of denied motherhood haunting Sonia as she plays Gertrude. There is also Sonia feeling like a ghost, who has no Nakba story like the others, who feels ‘the intruder was my own reflection.’ But in taking action, she finds she can ‘dispel the ghost’ and become present. Her father states he 'was born into this,' but that 'It wasn’t until I left Palestine that I really knew Palestine.' With Sonia the family is able to bring it full circle and it isn't until she returns that she can truly know it. It makes for a powerful cycle of family narrative across generations.

‘There is now, and there is afterwards. There comes a feeling of life opening…we rise, and I began to feel a strange elation, one of thousands, moving at the same time, bowing at the same time, rising at the same time. It did not matter who or what I was. I was present…’

Isabella Hammad has created a masterpiece in Enter Ghost. It is a harrowing look at the conflict in the region, a brilliant look at the role of art in political struggle, and a insightful investigation into identity. Hammad writes with such power and this novel completely consumed me. I’d go as far as to say this is one of the best novels of the decade so far. A moving work that makes us think, feel, and, hopefully, act.

5/5

‘If there’s a clear line from the force, the body follows…to draw a pure line between motivation and effect. Between conviction and action.’

[Adam Dalva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant book, beautifully written, a bit like DRIVE MY CAR, in Palestine, with Hamlet. What could be better?

[Elizabeth (Plant Based Bride) · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thoughtful and moving novel which examines the many layers of Palestinian identity, masterfully mirroring Hamlet's themes and theatrical elements onto the backdrop of Palestine and Israel. Hammad beautifully captures the internal voice of an actor, as well as the familial bonding of a cast through the process of rehearsals and performances of a piece of theatre. The squabbles, crushes, jealousy, and undying support that grows in that environment like a weed. She also deftly handles the complexity of varying Palestinian experiences, the different rights and freedoms assigned based on so many arbitrary factors, and the oppressive military presence and surveillance that lends a sense of foreboding to the everyday.

Hamlet, having been banned in Israeli prisons as it was seen as a dangerous text featuring a man blazing with anger, hungering to avenge a profound injustice, was the perfect choice of play to set the stage for this book, and I loved the way the text was interwoven with dialogue to reinforce and deepen it.

I will definitely be reading more of Hammad's work.


“I think that, sometimes, when calamity strikes and puts normal life under strain, feelings that have been stifled by everyday evasion can break free and make it easy to talk where before it felt impossible. Clouds, parted, dissolve. I wondered if this was always happening in Palestine, where calamity was always so close. Or whether it was different for those who, living here, endured it without respite, for whom constant calamity was itself the condition of normal life.” Page 316


Trigger/Content Warnings: infidelity, starvation, xenophobia, racism, abortion, miscarriage, grief, medical content, blood, eating disorders, oppression


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[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

Readers of novels know that for true events or situations, novels can be better at showing people’s lived experiences than any newspaper article. And that’s what this novel shows: The sheer insanity of having to live under a regime of stratified layers and barriers, of shifting qualifications and passports, and of not being able to live life like you should be. There’s no whining and moaning here, though that could be excused, just observations of how family members and friends and others cope.

My only quibble is the amount of detail. It threatened to seem too much for me in that respect in the beginning (and perhaps somewhat as I neared the end), but I’m glad I continued and it’s a book I still feel days later. For me, and perhaps not surprisingly, the most superb sections are about Hamlet: the talking it over, the rehearsals, the productions, the uses of the ghost—and that last chapter.

[luce (cry bebè's back from hiatus) · Rating 2 out of 5]

“Something about him triggered a pulse of recognition; not that he was someone in particular, but that he was like me, blended and uncertain.”

Enter Ghost is the kind of novel that on paper, is exactly my kind of read. Novels focusing on alienated women who travel somewhere they both feel like they belong to but do not, such as The Human Zoo and The Far Field, tend to appeal to me and so do main characters who are a combination of pathetic, churlish, and selfish. And yet, Sonia, our central character, manages to be not only painfully uninteresting, despite her attempts at fashioning herself as interesting and oblique, but profoundly annoying. I am sure that this was to some extent the desired extent but the narrative does suggest that she is far more complex and fascinating a figure than she actually is. Not only did I find her boring and obnoxious but there were several instances where I had a hard time 'buying' into her. She presents herself as this somewhat jaded and remote actor with a tendency to be in relationships with questionable power dynamics (she has an affair with the director of a play she was starring in), but more often than not her internal monologue and her responses to other people's words and actions struck me as sanctimonious and affected.

Still, I am not about to dissuade prospective readers from giving Enter Ghost a chance given that YMMV. If this novel is on your radar I recommend you check out some more positive reviews.

Sonia Nasir, our narrator, is an actress in her late thirties who decides to visit her older sister Haneen in Haifa both to escape tribulations of the heart and, having not visited since the second intifada, to reconnect with her heritage. While Haneen returned to become a teacher, Sonia remained in London to build her acting career. In Haifa, their relationship is uneasy, as their attempts at having meaningful conversations often lead to disagreements and recriminations. As Sonia attempts to form a new understanding of Palestine, she finds herself looking to her past, in particular, a traumatic experience during her adolescence there. Despite Haneen’s lukewarm welcome, Sonia does meet through her Mariam, a director who is working on a production of Hamlet in the West Bank. For all her protestations, and her perplexing not-so-warm feelings toward Mariam, Sonia finds herself travelling to Ramallah with her to play the part of Gertrude. There she meets the other actors, one of whom she is particularly attracted to.

Their production however faces many obstacles, from the long drives and alienating checkpoints they have to go through, but they are all too aware of the ever-encroaching possibility of violence, persecution, and oppression at the hands of Israeli authorities. Mariam’s own brother has come under 'suspicion', and her connection to him may pose a danger to their production. However, Mariam, who believes that their play can be a form of resistance, is determined to make the play work, regardless of outside forces and internecine disputes.

Before I move on to what I did not like about Enter Ghost, I will mention what was effective: Isabella Hammad manages to give readers both an overview of contemporary Palestine and a more intimate close-up of the everyday experiences of Palestinians who continue to live under oppression. The confusion, uncertainty, and anger felt by many of her characters are rendered with clarity and acuity. I also appreciated the author’s exploration of displacement, (multi)heritage, and the way she is able to convey the confusion and sadness that are specific to feeling, or being made to feel, like an outsider in your own culture. Hammad also shows the divide between Palestinians living ‘inside’ Israel and those in the West Bank, without resorting to easy categorisations. So, when it comes to rendering time and place, Hammad certainly demonstrates a skilled hand.

What ultimately made the book a chore was its protagonist, a character that I found improbable, in that her internal monologue was full of anachronism that did not make her into a more realistic character, but an unconvincing actor ("He drew nearer and I shrugged, shrinking with embarrassment and virginity"/"I was ready to be outraged if he kissed me. I imagined his pillowy lips"). That she is under the impression of being this complex and ambiguous person, made her hammy performance all the more egregious. She has so many chips on her shoulder you might as well order an aperitif while you are reading this. I can think of so many books that succeed in portraying the uneasy bond between two sisters who spend a lot of their time bickering and snapping at each other, both of whom believe that the other has had an easier time or is more adjusted than they are, examples being Sunset and Yolk. But here Haneen and Sonia's interactions were stilted in a way that did not seem convincing. That is not me saying that they needed to be close, far from. In fact, I was expecting the narrative to explore how the physical distance between them as well as the diverging paths they took in life caused or contributed to the emotional rift between them. But this didn’t really come through. Their fights just didn’t ring true to me (if they did to you, ben per te) and their dynamic was just underwhelming. And so for the matter was Sonia and Mariam’s ‘friendship’. Sonia spends most of the narrative painting M as being an unpleasant yet fascinating figure, yet, suddenly, we are to believe she cares for her deeply. I never understood her enmity towards Mariam, at one point she describes her as possessing a "straightforward, repugnant, magnetic light"...and it just seemed uncalled for and random to be honest.

And the play...I wasn’t expecting chunks of actual Hamlet to make up the narrative but they do. Not only that but the narrative switches to a play/script format more than once even during scenes where the characters are not rehashing. Maybe this will appeal to others readers, but I found this meta choice to be jarring and not particularly suited to the tone of the narrative.
Maybe the rehearsals themselves could have been more interesting if the people taking part were fleshed out, but they are not. Early on the author uses actual character introductions in a way that seems a cop-out at actually ‘showing/establishing’ their personalities and personal histories in a more natural way over the course of the narrative. It did not help that Sonia fails to really see most of them as people, especially the two younger men, for who she has some motherly feelings, and she uses to make points about the male ego. It’s a pity that they are not given more of a voice but flattened to fit Sonia and even Mariam's discourses and theories on male youth, masculinity, and rivalries.
Very early on Sonia makes a move on of the actors in a way that was cringe and pathetic, but not in a funny or relatable way, but I later on came to understand that Sonia really thinks she is an intriguing figure ("I had a marketably unusual appearance, or so they said"). Being in Sonia’s head was a tiresome affair as I felt mostly annoyed by her self-pitying, her dull observations and assumptions about other people, as well as her painfully cliched love life.

I would have liked for the story to remain more focused on Sonia’s relationships with her family, her sister and dad in particular, who are often sidelined in favor of Sonia’s navel-gazing, her career retrospective, her farcical projections, whereby Sonia attributes unconvincing motivations and traits people around her, and flashbacks that are clearly meant to make us feel bad for her.
The story slowly inches its way forward with few if any emotionally satisfying beats. The main character, despite her self-dramatizing, is a sulky bore, and the people around her never come into focus. Still, even if I found this novel wanting in terms of storyline and character development, Enter Ghost is not an ‘empty’ read as it is a novel that deals with oppression and revolution, and interrogates nations and identities that are displaced and fragmented. I just wish that the author had not created such a boring and unbelievable character and one who fails so spectacularly to be amusing, insightful, and/or interesting.
The story feels drawn out and the prose at times tries to be oblique and complex but succeeds only in unnecessarily over-elaborate.
The glimpses into their theatrical production and theatre, in general, tended to be more interesting but were more often than not ruined b Sonia's obnoxious explanations and truisms. A lot of the dialogues were stilted, and even if the characters now and again do say something that is 'convincing', they remain thinly rendered figures.
I wish that the author had committed more fully to making Sonia into more of a mystifying and detached figure, but it seemed that she did not fully want to commit to making her into a flawed, destructive even, person. Ironically, her attempts at making us feel bad for Sonia, by showing us that her family left her out of the loop and those times shitty men treated her badly (who could have predicted that), only succeeded in making her into a bland shade of 'unlikeable'.
I can't see myself re-reading this in order to see if my not liking this book is a case of right book/wrong time but the occasion might rise where I am stranded on a deserted island and this is the only book at hand...

Like I said above, don't take my review to heart given that you may click with Sonia or Hammad's storytelling in a way that I wasn't able to.

[Maxwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

At once tender and tension-filled, here is a captivating story examining performance, control, and the cost of daily living in an occupied land from British-Palestinian writer, Isabella Hammad.

Sonia, a London-based actress, returns to her ancestral homeland for the first time in a dozen years to visit her sister, Haneen, who teaches at an Israeli university. Of Dutch & Palestinian heritage, Haneen holds Israeli citizenship while Sonia does not. There’s clearly some unresolved issues between the distant siblings which Sonia is hoping to mend on her trip, doubling as an escape from a failed romance back in England. Meanwhile she gets coaxed into performing in a West Bank production of Hamlet by a childhood friend they spent summers around. In the lead up to opening night, Sonia, her sister, and the cast and crew discover the potentially treacherous stakes of such a performance in a land haunted by memory.

Hammad’s writing is exquisite; effortless and lyrical, while staying grounded in the time and place these characters inhabit. I felt right there with them in their daily struggles, rehearsals, long drives with frequent checkpoint stops, cigarette breaks, conversations over fruit and coffee. There’s a visceral quality to the prose that lingers even when you’re not reading it.

I found myself growing more and more attached to the characters, particularly the sibling dynamic, as the story continued. The dialogue is both witty and layered, with just as much unsaid that can be read in characters looks to one another or a turned shoulder after a quick remark. The ensemble slowly took form and began to stand out from one another too which I felt she handled expertly.

Without spoiling anything, I will say the last few chapters had me holding my breath. The story structure balanced plot and character development, with us following their journey to opening night while conversations and current events pepper the background. It’s tense! I was nervous and excited with each page turn. And I feel like she nailed the ending.

My wife picked this one out for me to read from her shelf and I’m so glad she did! An excellent must read for contemporary lit fic fans.

[Melanie (meltotheany) · Rating 5 out of 5]

resilience can look so different and resistance can look so different. and this is a really powerful, and beautiful, and heartbreaking book about a woman finding the power of those two things (alongside her family and her culture) while coming back and performing hamlet in Palestine.

being born into this genocide, and knowing your parents were also born in this genocide, and your grandparents, and so on for over 100 years. all having first memories of realizing they were living under occupation. all having first moments of being a part of an uprising to protect their land. all having stories that may feel unspeakable to even pass down. and all the childhood trauma, growing up in this trauma, trauma still being inflicted in 2025, … it’s so harrowing i don't even have words for it.

but there is also such a strong message of hope, and finding art to help you, and finding power that others cannot take from you. i highly recommend this one. and please remember that Palestine should be free, and we all should be helping to contribute to that freedom, with our voices, our money, and our politicians.

trigger + content warnings: harassment with airport security, racism, xenophobia, colorism, talk of infidelity, genocide, occupation, colonization, war, murder, death, torture, starvation, gun violence, attacks, violence, talk of medication abuse for weight loss, mention of disordered eating in past, abortion in past, miscarriage in past, divorce in past, depression, grief, blood, bad medical care (unprofessional doctor giving pelvic exam care (mental / emotional abuse)

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━━♡ buddy read with evie

[fatma · Rating 4 out of 5]

What strikes me the most--and really, what impressed me the most--about Enter Ghost is its writing. Everything that works about this novel works because its writing does, and everything I can say about its writing I can also say of it as a novel more broadly. Hammad's writing, here, is incisive, measured, restrained. More to the point, it is distinctly unsentimental and yet always sympathetic. It's a very sensitive novel in the way it's attuned to the nuances of its characters, especially its narrator, Sonia; it gives you such a strong sense of the fine gradations of these characters' reactions, thoughts, and feelings. That is, it's a precisely written novel because it is a sensitively written one, and it's a sensitively written novel because it is a precisely written one. It pays attention to the details, gives them the space to matter, so that the more you read the novel the more those details get added to each other, and the more richly layered the story becomes.

"I was professionally skilled at holding two things in my mind at once and choosing which to look at as felt convenient. And not only which to look at, but which to actually believe."

One part of the novel where I think this sensitivity especially shines is in the strained relationship between Sonia and her older sister, Haneen. The whole story begins with Sonia landing in Haifa, having decided to take the summer off to spend time with Haneen, who works at a university there. The relationship between these two sisters is one of the pillars of the novel: there is so much unsaid between Sonia and Haneen, and across their interactions, you get a sense for the contours of the issues they are tiptoeing around--their family, their distance, their history--but not necessarily of the full substance of those issues. They clearly care about each other, and yet many of their moments hint at a tension that, as the novel moves forward, we're waiting to boil over. And it is exactly in those moments--the tipping points when the tensions finally boil over--where Hammad's writing is especially effective. Hammad manages to write Big Scenes that feel important but not overblown, moving but never sentimental. So many of the most memorable moments in Enter Ghost are memorable not because they are filled to the brim, but because they are restrained--and because they are restrained, they are able to resonate in the true sense of the word: to reverberate, to ring outwards, to linger.

"My whole life I'd been aware of Haneen's stronger moral compass; it made me afraid to confide in her until the very last moment, until I absolutely needed to. I also wanted to resist her, the way a child resists a parent and at the same time absorbs their wisdom; I wanted to sulk in her second bedroom and feel better with the secret muffled gladness that someone was holding me to account."

Thematically, Enter Ghost is such a rich novel, too. It's about a West Bank production of Hamlet, so the question of the role of art in political resistance is very much at the forefront of the story, though certainly not in any hackneyed or simplistic way. The characters are acutely alive to this question, and think critically about what they want to accomplish not just with their production, but with their production of Hamlet specifically. A lot of the novel's substance is concentrated into this production--the politics, of course, but also the thematic concerns, the conflict, the characters, their dynamics, their backstories--and this ultimately makes it such a potent and fascinating lodestone for the story. I loved the way Hammad incorporated scenes from Hamlet into key character and story moments; I loved the camaraderie--but also the tension--between all the cast members; I loved Mariam, their brilliant director; and I just loved the way theatre as a whole provided such fertile ground for this story to go in all kinds of compelling and thought-provoking directions.

"Nothing is more flattering to an artist than the illusion that he is a secret revolutionary. These public developments created a feeling among the cast that we were, in fact, preparing ourselves on a training base for an operation with a transcendental goal, that in combing our translated lines for subtext we were fighting the odds in the name of Palestinian freedom."

Moving, deftly written, and with a layered, distinct sense of its narrator's interiority, Enter Ghost is an excellent novel from an author whose future books I already can't wait to read.

Thanks so much to Grove Atlantic for providing me with an eARC of this via NetGalley!

[Emmeline · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars
Now longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction.

The director of a production of Hamlet in the West Bank says to her cast during a rehearsal: “The two options Hamlet sees are to die or to live. What do you think about that?”

And a few minutes later an actress replies “there’s a third way. You can be a ghost.”

It’s one of the few moments of overt symbolic commentary in Isabella Hammad’s Enter Ghost. Elsewhere, characters are skittish of metaphor and interpretation, although the mere act of performing Hamlet in the West Bank demands it. “You’ll be all right as long as you don’t make Majed wear a kuffiyeh and sunglasses,” the narrator Sonia says at one point, and then: “Why don’t we just make Ophelia a suicide bomber?” She’s told there was already a version like that quite recently.

To take arms against a sea of troubles, indeed.

This is such a lovely, full, dense, intellectual, ambitious book. It’s been a long time since I’ve read a modern book with so much going on, almost like a Victorian or Russian novel (but thankfully only 300 pages) with many characters and many scenes. Some of its ambition wanders off and gets lost in the wilds sometimes… some characters remain a little underdeveloped, sometimes the intellectual underpinning leaves it a little cold, but nonetheless, I was thoroughly engaged by this insider-outsider tale.

Sonia is a British actress of Palestinian heritage who gets roped into playing Gertrude while on holiday in the West Bank. In some ways she is the ideal narrator for a story like this; knowledgeable enough not to need information dumps every 5 minutes, outsider enough to ask for clarification, Arabic speaking and able to mix with locals, and unsure of her own feelings about Palestine.

“I’m interested in ambivalence, and I’m interested in the process by which people become politicised,” Isabella Hammad said on the Tin House podcast Between the Covers. I’m not much of a podcast person, but luckily listened to this one before starting, and it was a very rich discussion covering everything from the Arabic theatre world to the author’s personal observations on the erosion of land in the West Bank.

Despite the above quote, this is certainly not a book about a woman becoming a suicide bomber or anything like that: the focus remains on the performance of Hamlet with its many confusions, betrayals and difficulties. From funding (to take money from Europe, or from Kuwait?) to the logistics of rehearsals (the cast comes from all over the West Bank, all having different degrees of freedom of movement or requiring security passes) to a possible mole in the ranks, and also more typical theatrical problems such as famous stars with no talent and interpersonal affairs and disputes, the play’s the thing here, consistently.

This worked well for me, as a one-time theatre enthusiast and lover of Shakespeare. Occasionally, whole sections of chapters are formatted as theatre scripts, which both feels right and allows a great deal of talking to be pushed through in fewer pages. Sonia felt believable as an actress, a longtime professional but struggling with her lines in classical Arabic. Sometimes we hear the actors speak Shakespeare’s words; at other times, Hammad has taken Jabra Ibrahim Jabra’s Arabic translation and freely translated back into English, creating a slight jarring effect, or distance, from the famous text.

As the play develops, Sonia must also repair her relationship with her sister Haneen, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, and come to terms with her childhood memories and her adult understanding of the region. Much of this conflict is played out through language: both sisters speak Arabic, Haneen also speaks Hebrew and even reads it for pleasure, while Sonia, navigating Israel with only a British passport, insists on her Englishness when she moves more broadly through Haifa and particularly when she passes through checkpoints — at one point coming face-to-face with an Israeli soldier from Manchester. Her own mother is half-Dutch, and the tricky tangle of diaspora threads are everywhere in this narrative.

As I said above, it is a dense and ambitious book. “I never want it to be like I’m hand-holding a Western reader,” Hammad has said, and indeed she walks a very narrow line in presenting a thoroughly complex and realized foreign world.

A few further things that came up in the Between the Covers podcast that deepened my enjoyment of the book:

-Host David Naimon and Hammad discuss a line in Jean Genet’s Prisoner of Love: “Spectacle is the product of despair,” and later Sonia will say of their play that “I had a horrible, useless revelation, which was that in some way the meaning of our Hamlet depended on this suffering” [of the people of Palestine]. This carried over into a discussion of Arabic theatre, which also runs through the book, that “the purpose of tragedy is happiness,” but that Arabic theatre is specialized in comedy and satire.

-The working title of this book was “Go, Bid the Soldiers Shoot,” the last line of Hamlet, which refers to the ongoing war that forms the backdrop of the Prince of Denmark’s particular madness. The current title, is of course, the repeat stage direction that augments that madness. I’m in the position of thinking how excellent both titles are, what’s lost by losing the one, what’s gained by using the other. Shakespearean framing really is a gift that keeps on giving.

And so is this novel, really. I'm already signed up to watch the recording of Andrew Scott's Hamlet and read Genet's book. A lovely sense of doors opening.

[Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé]

“Something is Rotten in the State of Israel”

This is a ghost story


Enter Ghost was such an interesting read. I have so many things to say about the story and yet it feels difficult to put all of my thoughts into words. Here's an attempt at doing just that.

Enter Ghost follows a cast of characters haunted by the past of what their country once was, the present of the violent occupation, the hope for the future that always feels *just* out of reach, as well as all of the alternate realities that exist where they are all truly free. I loved how Isabella Hammad told such a human story about the lives of these individuals who just want to make great art while grappling with both structural and interpersonal tragedies.

As a proud bardolator (aka an intense Shakespeare stan) this story felt like it was very much written for me. It is a story about a production of Hamlet in Palestine, the fragility of sisterhood, imposter syndrome and the complexities of grief - all things I love to read about. This theory of mine that this book might have been written for someone like me proved to be even more true the more I read, and felt seen in a lot of the themes the narrative tackles. One overarching message I appreciated was how art is not only inherently political, but is also a necessary and valid form of protest. So often as an artist, you read about the tragedies that people are experiencing and you feel heartbroken and powerless, and then you start to question whether anything you do will impact anyone in any meaningful way -- the way more seemingly "practical" careers might. I especially felt this way during the height of the COVID pandemic. Since then I have of course learned that there is validity in all forms of activism, and this story served as a beautiful reminder of how and why.

I would love to listen to Hammad talk about all of the thematic choices she made and see if any of my personal theories are right, but overall I'm just so glad this story exists.

Using Shakespeare's Hamlet -- a play (like many of Shakespeare's works) which is upheld universally as the pinnacle of literature as well as this innocuous text that represents a time before the supposed pollution of 'woke culture' -- was an incredibly daring but brilliant choice. Using such a revered and 'universal' text to tell this very human story about community, love, loss and theatre demonstrates a point I think Hammad was trying to make that is best summarised by a quote from the book: "We are all Hamlet." Which is to say, we are all human, we are all Palestinian.

[Trudie · Rating 3 out of 5]

An unfortunate divide exists between what this book is and what I had hoped it might be. So it lands with a kind of faint thwack on my reading conscious, destined to fade from view.

If I was was hoping for something like Minor Detail levels of impact then I was bound to be very disappointed. Yes it is about a political awakening and about staging Hamlet on the West Bank, and that synopsis appealed.
However I wasn't quite prepared for how unappealing I found Sonia as the central character. She is not an "unlikable narrator" just a really self involved one. Maybe that was deliberate. Characterisation generally was a weak point - this was a collection of people talking and talking and yet I didn't feel I understood any of them.
I should have predicted that reading about the minutia of theatre rehearsal was not going to be something that works for me. The deeper resonance of the play being Hamlet and how that relates to the state of relations between Israelis and Palestinians was more interesting in theory than in practise .... and yet I gleaned some hard won insights.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very intelligent and passionate young woman has written an equally noteworthy novel. Set against the backdrop of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (now in its 75th year), a diverse group of performers (all culturally Arab) rehearse and perform Hamlet. There are all kinds of harmonies and dissonances as things progress: political, territorial, romantic, financial, religious. and artistic. It is all told from a Palestinian viewpoint, naturally, but I have needed this to broaden my personal understanding of such a complicated, horrific, destructive situation.

For the entire story, I remained quite interested in what was happening between the central characters. This was true whether they were struggling with how to put Shakespeare across in classical Arabic 0r negotiating vehicles through unpredictable border checkpoints. And I really enjoyed the sections devoted to interpreting, rehearsing, and performing Hamlet.

I waited in vain to care more about Sonia, Haneen, Baba, and their specific family circumstances. And I simply could not summon interest in Sonia's troubled romantic past. The reader hears about paramours Johnny, Aiden, Marco, Harold, and Ibrahim and yet these relationships (with the exception of Brahim, who is in the cast) felt like unhelpful detours from the real focus of the novel.

For whatever reason, I also had some difficulties with Sonia herself. Some, I know, will disagree, but she was ultimately one of the least interesting characters to me. While I understand why Hammad chose to create a protagonist who is vague and speculative much of the time, it wore on me. Sonia's first-person narration is heavily peppered with if and perhaps and maybe. Conditional phrases hopscotch across the page: "I wondered if... and whether... what might have been... I guess this means... why, I wondered, did I feel..." One longs to return to a decisive conversational thread or spend time with another character (any character) simply to move forward.

I happened upon a recorded interview Hammad recently gave for FRANCE 24. Despite a disappointing interviewer (young, animated, and lacking gravitas), it provides the kind of clarity and assurance I wanted more of in the book.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZrpt...

[Hannah · Rating 1 out of 5]

So many of my Goodreads friends liked this book, so I really wanted to like it too. I did not. I found myself unable to care about the characters or even to dislike them. I felt only a numb apathy. I should've DNF'd it. I admit I got lazy about finding my next read. Kind of wish I hadn't...

[Sarah-Hope · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was eager to read Enter Ghost and to see how the author overlapped the current crises facing Palestinians and the use of Hamlet as a tool to explore those crises, but this book never gelled for me. I found it a very slow read, and I never reached a moment when it pulled me in. The prose is quite capable, so I'm thinking those with different tastes than mine might find it impressive.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher; the opinions are my own.

[Antonio Luis · Rating 4 out of 5]

La protagonista, Sonia Nasir, regresa a Palestina después de muchos años en los que ha trabajado como actriz en Londres. Y ahí están las dos bases de esta novela: el teatro y Palestina. La trama combina muy bien la perspectiva íntima desde la situación personal de la protagonista y el contexto político en que se narra. Su historia personal con la historia colectiva. Hay un simbolismo magnífico en la figura de la protagonista como el fantasma, porque después de tantos años fuera se retrata perfectamente la situación de desarraigo, ha crecido fuera, habla inglés, se ha convertido en una actriz profesional, de alguna manera su identidad está fragmentada y es como si volviera a sus orígenes, a su vida anterior, propiamente como un fantasma.

Otro punto que me ha encantado es la ambientación teatral, el simbolismo del poder del teatro como resistencia. Los personajes van a representar Hamlet, y se narra con detalle la preparación de la obra, los ensayos bajo vigilancia, el montaje… La función teatral se convierte en un acto de dignidad, de afirmación de su identidad, y la obra también guarda un gran simbolismo como acto de rebelión artística ante los riesgos y la tensión política.

La protagonista interpreta a la madre de Hamlet, y aporta gran cantidad de matices y conexiones en los que yo nunca había reparado. Como madre, parte del poder familiar, implicada en una traición, con sentimientos de culpa, atrapada en circunstancias más grandes que ella…, todo ello puede entenderse como un reflejo de la condición palestina bajo ocupación y la obra se convierte en un espacio para confrontar esa condición. Pareciera incluso que a través de Sonia interpretando un papel occidental tan clásico de Shakespeare se construyera un puente entre Palestina y Occidente, una metáfora de esa idea de reconciliar sus raíces palestinas moldeadas por Occidente, además de ser también un ejemplo simbólico de la diáspora por sus propios sentimientos de desarraigo, como tantos palestinos obligados a vivir fuera. Me ha parecido uno de los grandes aciertos de la novela, esa tensión entre pertenecer y no pertenecer, entre tener una historia y a la vez sentirse fantasma en ella.

Sin embargo, creo que ha forzado mucho tanto simbolismo, me han sobrado explicaciones que exceden más allá de lo que tiene sentido por la propia obra teatral. Tanto la obra como la protagonista muestran unos paralelismos que me han parecido interesantísimos, pero también he tenido la sensación de que la autora quiere que cada elemento del teatro represente algo del conflicto palestino, y me ha saturado. Hace la novela a ratos muy densa y muy lenta.

También me han pesado mucho algunos pasajes introspectivos que se me han hecho muy largos, probablemente por la cantidad de significado (identidad, familia, política, teatro…) que la autora quiere condensar.

Para una lectura perfecta, me habría gustado más que el texto fluyera de forma natural

[laurel [the suspected bibliophile] · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know how to feel about this one.

It was incredible. It was haunting. It was heartbreaking. It was...Hamlet.

Hamlet in the West Bank, performed by Palestinian actors and heavily surveilled by Israeli forces—can the show go on, or will it be death by a thousand cuts? Or will it serve as allegory, that no matter what is stacked against them, the people of the land will survive, will create art, will endure? Will it be foreshadowing the horrors to come?

I really loved this. And I still can't find the ways to capture my thoughts into words, as Gaza is razed by Israeli forces and tens of thousands of Palestinians are murdered and millions displaced. A literal genocide happening as I read this work.

Enter Ghost, indeed.

[leah · Rating 4 out of 5]

“if we let disaster stand in our way we will never do anything. every day here is a disaster.”

[Ярослава]

Родинна драма на тлі окупації і війни: лондонська акторка палестинського походження, британська громадянка, приїздить улітку погостювати в Хайфу до своєї сестри, професорки соціології й ізраїльської громадянки, і майже випадково влипає грати Гертруду в палестинській постановці "Гамлета" в тіні великої розподільчої стіни між ізраїльськими і палестинськими територіями.

Родинна драма дуже напружена і чудово виписана - аж іскрять конфлікти від образ (в обидва боки), зумовлених тим, хто поїхав, а хто залишився; родинна єдність і політична солідарність - це ніщо проти різниці досвідів, що тільки більшає, і всього замовчуваного, що не хочуть чи не можуть висловити в цій ситуації.

Лінія з постановкою "Гамлета" теж дуже кумедна і дотепна:

MARIAM So. What do we think the play is about?
AMIN: (Tentatively.) War.
MARIAM: Good.
Pause.
MARIAM: What else?
MAJED: Families, family drama.
IBRAHIM: Free will.
MARIAM: Very good.
AMIN: Revenge.
MARIAM: Yes, that’s a big one.
[...]
IBRAHIM: Martyrdom. Hamlet is a martyr.
MARIAM: That’s great. Martyrdom. (Pause.) Anything else?
WAEL: (Speaking for the first time.) National liberation.
Everyone looks at WAEL
MARIAM: In what way, national liberation?
Pause.
WAEL: If Hamlet is a martyr . . . (Leaves off.)
MARIAM: You mean Hamlet is a martyr like a Palestinian martyr.
WAEL: (Shrugging.) Yeah.
[...]
IBRAHIM: It’s not a very optimistic vision of national liberation, if everyone dies in the end.

Ну, крім усього іншого, "Гамлет" - це ще про досягнення свого на політичній арені за допомогою медіа (так, я про вставну виставу, якою Гамлет виводить Клавдія на чисту воду). Я взагалі люблю постановки "Гамлета", де з "Гамлета" роблять політичну драму і/чи наголошують на цьому вставному сюжеті, тому була в захваті від цих усіх діалогів. Подобається, як тут авторка іронізує над спробами знайти у давній класиці політичну релевантність - але водночас визнає, що практикування мистецтва завжди пов'язане зі статусом, владою, правилами співіснування спільноти - тож у будь-якому разі в нього буде вимір політичної дії.

Загалом, мені багато що сподобалося в цьому романі, але в сумі не вистачило якоїсь цілісності, якогось фінального пуанту, що зшив би все докупи (а той фінальний пуант, що є, викликає в мене досить багато запитань якраз про те, як репліки п'єси зшиваються з реальністю). Але взагалі цілком симпатичні враження.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enter Ghost is, on its surface, the story of Sonia Nasir, a London actress taking the summer off and visiting her sister Haneen who lives in the family’s ancestral city of Haifa. So much is wrapped up in that sentence. And so much lives beyond the surface. Sonia is escaping a love affair and seeking a closer relationship with her older sister, who teaches at an Israeli university. Once she arrives in Israel, she regains a fuller awareness of being Palestinian.

Shortly after her arrival, Sonia meets her sister’s friend Mariam who is in the process of casting and producing Hamlet in Arabic on the West Bank. No! Sonia is not available to act in the play but she will help. But Sonia’s plans change and through her, we readers begin to see the complexities of existence for Palestinians anywhere in the Israeli sphere of influence as the various cast members make their plans to meet each day, if possible.

There are multiple layers to this book, as there are multiple types of ghosts being experienced. The ghosts of Hamlet are only the most obvious, but there are communal ghosts of Palestinian history and of Israeli history also. Ghosts of Sonia and Haneen’s family that haven’t been dealt with. Then there are the ghosts of Sonia’s past. Sonia is a confusing and seemingly confused and conflicted woman, unsure of herself at this possible turning point.

I liked this book but found it difficult at times chiefly because Sonia is a difficult character to understand. Why she responds as she does at times leaves me wondering. But then I remind myself that many of us are works in progress. I hope she finds her place.

The author writes well and is able to capture feelings and sense of place very well. She has also written some very realistic scenes of emotional tension and release throughout the novel. Recommended to those looking for a different read.

Rating 3.5* rounded to 4*

Thank you to Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for an e-copy of this book.

[Karim Anani · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had the chance to read an ARC of Enter Ghost, so I grabbed it. The short of it is it's very good. There's a pacing issue in the early chapters, but the story lands so gracefully, you almost want to high five it.

It centres on a British-Palestinian actress named Sonia who has stepped into the borders of middle age. She returns to Palestine to play Gertrude. And it's that word, "returned," on which so much of the novel hinges.

I appreciated the story Isabella Hammad's pulled from the maelstrom of Palestine and Israel, and especially the needless violence inflicted by the occupier on the occupied. (If you've read anything on apartheid in the West Bank or about the laws discriminatory against Palestinians within Israel, you'll know what I mean.) She's told her story with beautiful prose that's deliberately distinct to what she's written elsewhere. Enter Ghost is moving and memorable. I loved where it goes and how it goes there. (I suspect I'll be thinking of it on Fridays.) I understood Sonia, who reminded me of so many friends and acquaintances I felt almost invasive, like I'd stepped into a therapy session or read their diaries, and the same applied to many of the characters around her.

I've been a fan of Isabella Hammad's since The Parisian: I picked it up on release day in April 2019—I remember because I was visiting my brother in Somerset and it made for a surreal juxtaposition with the book—and read it over the next four days. (I was a fan at the title page: The Parisian, or Al-Barisi. Same way all of England is "Lndn," even if you're waddling around Newcastle.) I've reread it since, plus some of her short stories ("Mr Canaan," "Using a Gun as a Symbol") and her essays; she has one on Lawrence of Arabia I find cathartic.

There are unifiers in her work, and I don't mean Hammad's obvious sensitivity, intelligence, or erudition. But Enter Ghost taps into the sense of malaise that comes from being politicised, having the weight of history on your head like a stack of plates—the (to crib another book) inheritance of loss. It holds up under scrutiny, though I wasn't sure at first, visceral as my reaction was.

I'll have to expound on this once the book is out—I'll hopefully have the space to write more then—but, if the 5-star rating hasn't made it obvious, lemme spell it out one more time: Enter Ghost is great.

[John Banks · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

Shortlisted for 2024 Women's Prize

Hammad's Enter Ghost offers a first-person narrative following Sonia, an actor of Palestinian heritage, as she returns to Haifa from London to reconnect with her older sister Hannen, a sociology academic at an Isreali University. Sonia, getting over a failed affair with an older director and an earlier divorce, is introduced by Hannen to Miriam, a theatre director who is staging Hamlet (to be performed in Arabic) in the West Bank. Sonia plays Gertrude and Ophelia, although the role of Ophelia is eventually taken on by another actor.

Much of Enter Ghost concerns the interactions among the group of Palestinian actors as they work together rehearsing and preparing to perform Hamlet. Always throughout is the conflict and the looming presence of the Israeli occupation: the daily searches and tensions at checkpoints, the interrogations by soldiers, surveillance from Israeli intelligence services, concerns with collaborators and so on. 'Enter Ghost' is at its strongest with this richly compelling account of the craft of acting and the significance of making and sharing art in such a terrible socio-political situation. Hammad's exploration of the power of artistic expression as a form of resistance is well-done.

Hammad makes much of the symbolism and 'play within a play' elements of Hamlet to offer insight and commentary aboout the political situation and its impacts on individuals, families and communities. I actually think, though, that this is the weakest part of the novel; for me, it felt heavy-handed. The theme of ghosts and hauntings, so central to Hamlet, when applied to this context of Palestine, is clever but lacks something.

Hammad also develops a thoughtful and nuanced account of familial relationships against the backdrop of Palestinian disposession. The relationship between Sonia and Hannen, fraught with simmering tensions and often unspoken misunderstandings rooted in their shared history, is particularly well-done. Ideas of family secrets and disclosure add depth to this exploration of familial dynamics.

I understand the deliberate othering of the Israelis as a looming presence throughout the work, which erupts with outbursts of violence at demonstrations and, of course, all the checkpoints and daily survelliance. I just think there's a missed opportunity for more nuance here, though, in the context of a work in which Hannen lives in the Israeli city of Haifa and works at an Israeli Univeristy. There are tensions around this that the book explores, but for me, they remain somewhat unexamined.

Enter Ghost doesn't quite work for me. I appreciated that the central character, Sonia, is deliberately not likeable; she's portrayed as somewhat conceited, distanced, and almost abstracted from the events around her and her interactions with others. Her interiority presents as a quite jaded, alienated, cynicisim that's very performed; well, she is a highly trained actor. This was interesting, I guess, but compounded my sense of affectation throughout the work.

In summary, "Enter Ghost" provides a thought-provoking exploration of art, identity, and conflict in the midst of Palestine's political turmoil. Hammad's skillfull portrayal of the enduring power of art in such contexts makes this a worthwhile read.

[Elaine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I saw that a lot of the GR folks I follow were "yes, but" on this one. I was just "yes". First of all, I gave Hammad (and the excellent audio narrator) enormous kudos for getting me to stick with a read that was painful for me at this particular historical juncture. Let's just say that Hammad's priors about Israel and Palestine are not my priors but the book got to me (even as memes and chants and online villainy have tended to close my ears of late). So I think that's to be hugely admired - this book shows, not tells, the restrictions, and fears, and arbitrary impositions that Mariam and the other characters live under (it's a powerful device that we experience this through the eyes of Sonia who tries to hold herself at a remove).

Second, the "play is the thing" at the heart of this book. If you love theater, and if you have experienced that temporary intensity and intoxication that is putting on a show by the seat of your pants, it is hard not to love this book that captures that so well. And that plays with Shakespeare's text on so many levels without clubbing you over the head with symbolism.

I read that many find Sonia annoying. I found her ambivalent, anxious, vain, protective of her separateness yet wanting to belong, but not annoying. She seemed a nuanced portrayal to me of a kind of young, kind of not, kind of successful, kind of not woman in a profession that valorizes the young and the successful, not a mother in a world that valorizes motherhood, not coupled in a world oriented to couplehood. So her characterization was not at all a negative for me.

Finally, i think this book was very enriched for me because I was listening to it while reading Brotherless Night, about the Sri Lankan civil war. Both books explicitly interrogate the Western understanding of the word "terrorist" while diving deep into the grinding reality of life under occupation. I could feel the books talking to each other in my head as I read them.

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an expertly crafted novel which is, in a way, about the Israel-Palestine conflict, more specifically the impact that the conflict and the resultant decisions about control of territory has impacted Palestinians- their individual and community identities. I thought it was really clever that Hammad set her protagonist’s, Sonia’s struggle to interpret the conflict, her Palestinian identity, and the way her family has been fractured by it, against the backdrop of the struggle she (and the whole cast) has to interpret Hamlet in Arabic. I found all these ideas really interesting, and they are expressed in considered prose. I was less convinced that we needed the narrative threads about Sonia’s failed romantic relationships. These didn’t enhance my reading, but took me out of the flow of the narrative. An excellent novel which I am grateful my bookclub brought to my attention.

[Kerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

read for the BT prize in fiction. runner up favorite for me out of the six.

It was a great listen and read. Lots of history about Palestine between the lines of a modern day story. It taught me much about Israel I did not know or had never thought about. It is a great bit of writing and continues on in the semi-final round. Can be a little slow paced at time but the story held my attention and I was glad to have read it. The audio is read by Nadia Albina and was excellent. I also had the print from the library and often read while listening--I do this just to absorb a little more and my mind tends to wonder less if the words are in front of me. If you have an interest in the current conflict in Israel this is good fiction to give you a little back ground. A good story, well written and worth the time. I recommend it highly.

[Vartika · Rating 4 out of 5]

“To be or not to be: that is the question” – thus begins the most well-known soliloquy from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. However, it is another – from Act II, Scene ii – that Isabella Hammad seizes upon in Enter Ghost.

While the bard’s most influential tragedy is capable of “seemingly endless retelling and adaptations by others” and has often been reordered to narrativise the heft and the stakes of contemporary geopolitical conflicts (most notably in in Vishal Bhardwaj’s 2014 Hindi-language cinematic adaptation Haidar), none have been quite as potent in their restraint as Hammad’s exemplary effort, published just before this year’s violent reignition of the decades-long ‘hostilities’ in Palestine.

The story in Enter Ghost is centered around an Arabic production of Hamlet in the West Bank, one haunted by the innumerable ghosts of and from Palestinian history. Though the theatrical product here is very much influenced by the Israeli occupation – rehearsed and performed outdoors, publicised by word of mouth, interrupted by arrests and interrogations, and attended by Zionist security forces waiting in the wings – it is entirely about the macro and microcosms of Palestinian lives and relationships. If all the world’s a stage on which Palestinian futures are to be mediated, Hammad conceives of a blazing social novel where “the Play is the thing, wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.”

The novel begins as any play must: a character appears on stage. This is Sonia Nasir, a London-based Palestinian actress re-entering her hometown for the first time since her childhood, raw from heartbreak and seeking refuge in the company of her elder sister Haneen, a member of faculty at an Israeli university in Tel Aviv. Determined to see through her visit as a vacation, she tries to remain undeterred in the face of a quick strip search at the airport, the strained air between herself and Haneen, and the knowledge that her ancestral home has long and willingly been sold off to Israeli settlers in Haifa. However, the past and politics are sure to exert their pressures, and Sonia soon finds herself involved with an adaptation of Hamlet in an ensemble being directed by the abrasive and strong-willed Mariam Mansour. Though slow on the uptake – having initially signed up only to help with read-throughs until a suitable Gertrude has been cast – Sonia finds herself seduced by the intra-cast discussions about the play’s significance: is it a revenge drama or a political allegory, and if so, is the Bard’s Denmark speaking to Israel or Palestine? Could it be that Gertrude, with her divided loyalties, comes to represent Palestine? What shape can Hamlet take in the West Bank, performed amidst turmoil and scrutiny by a motley cast of Palestinians, some with Israeli citizenship and others brought up as refugees in their land?

As we approach opening night, the parallels between the plot of Enter Ghost and Hamlet become clearer, as the process of casting, read-throughs, rehearsals and performance give way to treachery and romances, plays-within-plays, intense family drama, and a state facing tumult. Similarly, Sonia’s relationship with Palestine and her coming-of-age also emerge as thematically worth our attention. Indeed, Sonia – impenetrable and dissociative a narrator as she may be – seems almost to represent the tragedy of Palestine in places, and not just in that she is set to play Gertrude: her life, too, has been shaped by decisions taken in Britain; she, too, has been disappointed by the men who swore to uphold her mantle. That she may allegorise Palestinian history is most significant in what we learn of her relationship with motherhood: due to a uterine septum discovered during pregnancy, her body has too been divided and subject to a violent, forceful purge. All of this may well be the reason why she is so drawn to Mariam – though this is never directly addressed in the narrative, Sonia’s interest in the latter may well be rooted in the fact Mariam is, as a mother and as someone committed to causes both artistic and political, everything that Sonia is not, or at least, not yet.

What makes Enter Ghost most striking is the incisive and measured prose with which Hammad brings it to life, both as a fictional human interest story with a narrator who withholds herself from the reader, and as a text that is able to trace and hold broad socio-historical events – from the Nakba, the Six-Day War, and the divide between the Dafawim and ’48-ers to the Intifadas, Fida’i activism in Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria, and unacknowledged conflicts in places like Yemen – and particular events and phenomenon – including the 2017 Temple Mount shooting, the protests outside Al-Aqsa, and the terrifying routine of military checkpoints manned by British imports – with surgical precision. Borrowing, again, from Shakespeare, the novel reimagines the idea of a play-within-a-play in portions that are written like a theatrical script, and subtly interrogates the relationships between works of art, political functions, and sociopolitical context.

Though Hamlet is a Western play, it becomes far more vital and provocative in the Palestinian context than it could serve to be in British playhouses. And if it is Claudius whose guilty conscience Shakespeare’s hero was looking to reflect back to him, Hammad’s novel reframes her audience – and the percipients of the Palestine-Israel ‘conflict’ – as King. Towards the end of Enter Ghost, the spectre of Hamlet’s father is one of the last voices the Palestinian audiences hear before the security forces reign in. Readers beholding this mise-en-scène are left with more pervasive ghosts to grapple with – those of history, and the events that are presently being firmed into it.

A brilliant, sensitive, and timely work.

[Ebony (EKG) · Rating 4 out of 5]

this follows Sonia, who is a thirty-something Danish and Palestinian actress who returns to Palestine. This is her first time back to her family’s homeland in years, and she is roped into a production of Hamlet in the West Bank.

This was an engaging yet challenging read at times, especially considering the current g3nocide. I learned so much about homecoming and the ghosts of identity and motherhood that haunted the main character.

[Joy D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set primarily in Haifa, Ramallah, and the West Bank, this book explores many versions of the term “ghost” via the story of Palestinian sisters Sonia and Haneen. Sonia is an actress who has been living in England for eleven years. Haneen is working as a college professor in Israel. Sonia visits Haneen and, through meeting director Mariam, gets involved in a controversial production of Hamlet. It blends elements of family dynamics, historic conflict, and a woman coming to terms with her past and her identity. This one is written from the Palestinian perspective. I am always interested in understanding more about our world and will continue reading books about this region.

I can also recommend:
- Apeirogon by Colum McCann (fiction)
- The Almond Tree by Michelle Cohen Corasanti (fiction)
- The Lemon Tree by Sandy Tolan (non-fiction)

[Q · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enter Ghosts by Isabella Hammad.

I thought Isabella Hammad offered us a wonderful creative adaptation of Hamlet and the journey to bring the play into existance. In her prep for the book she translated Hamlet from Arabic to English and back again for writing the scenes and working with the diverse cast. Her book covered a lot of ground on different topics; predominately on the art of theater, politics and art, living in Israel, being an Arab artist and living in West Bank and Gaza and traveling to different parts of Israel and maneuvering security She had a really good understanding of people and relationships and how people speak
with each other or don’t or cause division in a group or family or region or nation.

She asks wonderful questions. Who is an Israeli? Who is considered an Arab? How do different Arabs get along? She writes about traditional Shakespearean Hamlet theater and creates a no frill Hamlet performance accessible to all. She kept taking the issues at hand (political and cultural etc.) and adapting them to what fits the changes needed for the cast and crew. I loved learning how to create a low budget play and cast a cast. And how they worked with the constant changes that arose. So much flexibility. Frustration, Irritation. One of the best parts was that you are there in the circle of it all - indirectly part of the play. There is political acting and political issues to deal with - her creativity and knowledge on these topics and theatre made the book and play seem real. The Hamlets and the whole cast were terrific. Many people had more then one role. There were many types of ghosts -Hamlets ghost but there were Palestinians ghost and Israeli’s ghosts and Gaza ghosts and Sonia’s and her family had personal ghosts and Mariam (the play directors) and cast members had their own ghosts too. There is fear and bias and dislikes. Since 48 and 83 their are the grudges, and currently there have been lots of types of ghosts for those in all parts of the country from all faiths and ethnicities. I was grateful for the history tidbits. It was nice to continue to widen my understanding a little more.

A good part of the book is about Sonia’s family’s history and relationships. And then there’s all the things people have held back from her. This part felt so real - family dynamics.

It was interesting how she portrayed the characters. How much she built friendship and didn’t. She had good discretion.

I enjoyed this book. I didn’t want to put it down. Wanted to see where Isabella and cast were going to take the plot and and add to the play. I wanted to see how the performances of Hamlet would occur and where. Would they make it work or not. Would Sonia (who played Gertrude) stay in the country after her 2 months promise or go back to London where she lived prior her involvement in the play
This was hard to review because I didn’t want to give away the specifics. And there is so much here to talk about.

I loved this book because it really talked about a sense of place. It was great to hear where and why or if the characters called it home. And the making of Hamlet streamed through with all its tragedy and tensions. A fitting place for the play.

[hana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Edit: changing my rating to 5 stars and also coming back to say more because I cannot stop thinking about this book and how good it was. So this book is about a 1/4 Dutch 3/4 Palestinian actress named Sonia who returns to Haifa from London to visit her sister Haneen, one of the few members of their family who has decided to carve out a life there. Sonia gets roped into playing in an Arabic rendition of Hamlet, directed by Haneen’s theatre friend Mariam. It’s of course inherently and unavoidably political, what with Haneen commuting to Tel Aviv to teach at a university while being heavily involved in Palestinian activism and the cognitive dissonance that comes with that, Mariam’s theatre troupe being composed of both Palestinians residing in the West Bank/Gaza as well as Palestinian citizens of Israel (“48ers”) and the different ways they are treated as they cross back and forth over boundary lines, and the hoops the team has to jump through to keep this West Bank production alive despite the Israeli gov trying to cut their funding and destroy their sets at every turn. But it’s about more, too — art as a medium for change/resistance (and is this necessarily a good thing? Does it breed complicity? Soothe the wounds that would otherwise spur us to remain angry and fight?), the messiness of sisterhood, and how difficult it is to pass family stories down between generations when those stories are steeped in trauma and hardship. My dad, though he has lived in Canada for more than half his life at this point, still shirks away from telling certain stories from his life in Iran.
Though this is a fictional story, Isabella Hammad herself is British-Palestinian and you can just FEEL that a lot of it is based on her experiences going back to her hometown in the summers, her relationship with her extended family, and how they have all been touched and changed in different ways by Israeli occupation. The audiobook is also wonderful and I highly recommend it. As the narrator, Nadia Albina, is also British-Palestinian, her reading of the Arabic lines in the book is so powerful and adds so much to the story.

really excellent writing, so layered and incisive. and i learned so much. i’m not smart enough to unpack everything this book has to offer but i look forward to diving into other reviews and analyses. this is why i love to read!!!
also: the audiobook rocks
also: i would really like to read more from palestinian authors