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Enter Ghost

Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2024

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Enter Ghost

Written by: Isabella Hammad
Narrated by: Nadia Albina
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Brought to you by Penguin.

Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2024.

After years away from her family's homeland, and healing from an affair with an established director, stage actress Sonia Nasir returns to Palestine to visit her older sister Haneen. Though the siblings grew up spending summers at their family home in Haifa, Sonia hasn't been back since the second intifada and the deaths of her grandparents. While Haneen stayed and made a life commuting to Tel Aviv to teach at the university, Sonia remained in London to focus on her burgeoning acting career and now dissolute marriage. On her return, she finds her relationship to Palestine is fragile, both bone-deep and new.

Once 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. Soon, Sonia is rehearsing Gertude's lines in classical Arabic and spending more time in Ramallah than in Haifa with a dedicated group of men 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 invasive and 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.

©2023 Isabella Hammad (P)2023 Penguin Audio

 Genre Fiction Historical Literary Fiction Political World Literature
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Critic Reviews

A gifted novelist... Enter Ghost is a moving and unforgettable book (SALLY ROONEY)
Feels completely different to anything else being written right now in English, a heartfelt meditation on the relationship between art and politics.
Enter Ghost retells Hamlet for now, dropping its readers deep into the contemporary tensions of the West Bank, asking crucial and layered questions... Hammad is a calm and vital storyteller, a writer of real rhythmic grace. (Ali Smith, author of Autumn)
A powerful new novel... Hammad is a pretty flawless writer.
Beautifully written, poignant yet forceful, thoughtful and thought provoking, but above all challenging the reader to respond to the question facing the characters in the novel: how to live under occupation while preserving your dignity and humanity? Hammad answers this question through taking us into the hearts and minds of the characters in the novel and through that into the heart and mind of Palestine. (Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran)
A thought-provoking and highly topical story about the complex connections to be found in art, politics and family life.
Enter Ghost is a masterful, deeply convincing portrait of the all-too-real consequences of political theater - in both senses. A moving and important novel that presses upon the urgent question of how we ought to live in the midst of the rubble (and ongoing chaos) of political crisis. (Namwali Serpell, author of The Old Drift)
A magnificent, deeply imagined story... A thought-provoking, engrossing story about the connections to be found in art, politics and family life.
Outstanding. Next-level. Aesthetically, intellectually, emotionally and culturally satisfying... Isabella Hammad is incapable of striking a false note. She immerses her heroine in volatile territory with the accuracy, compassion and coolness of a surgical knife sliding into a diseased body. The result is a stunning beauty - an eye-opening, uplifting novel that grants its vulnerable cast and their endeavors a rare and graceful dignity. (Leila Aboulela, author of Minaret)
There could hardly be a more urgent time to understand the inner lives of Palestinians, which are here depicted with poignance and grace.
All stars
Most relevant
If colour had a grief, what would it be.

As Shakespeare said - My hands are of your color, but I shame to wear a heart so white.

The story revolves around Sonia, a Dutch Palestinian actress, who is committed to perform Hamlet, a Shakespeare legend in a time of crisis in Palestine. She moves on from London to visit her sister long after childhood and ends up bargaining much more emotions than expected.

While talking to people and the cast of the okay, she goes back to remember local politics and trying to find her purpose.

A book about art and culture, Isabella Hammad says Escape was never really an escape, that was the problem. You only stumbled from one thing into another.

For some reason, this made me go back to Hamlet and read through to see how beautifully both relate to each other.

Black. Yellow. Red. If colour had a grief.

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Very intriguing writing using a theatre production of Hamlet to convey underlying meanings of the conflict in Israel-Palestine. A good book for theatre nerds or people who want fiction based in Palestine and cantered on Palestinian perspective of the war. But there are a lot of unnecessary details about the protagonist who by the way is so unbearably dull. The audiobook narrator is simply horrendous and I think I lost so much of the charm of this book because the narrator straight up botched the reading. There are no inflections, it’s just read in a monotone. Overall, interesting plot but please don’t get the audio version on audible.

A unique story of Israel-Palestine told through the lens of Hamlet

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