Enter Ghost

**LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024** Reeling from a disastrous love affair, actress Sonia Nasir finds love and hope in Shakespeare and Palestine. ‘A vital storyteller’ ALI SMITH 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. On her arrival, she finds her relationship to Palestine is fragile, both bone-deep and new. When Sonia meets the charismatic Mariam, a local director, she joins a production of Hamlet in the West Bank. Soon, Sonia is rehearsing with a dedicated, if competitive, group of men – yet as opening night draws closer, it becomes clear just how many obstacles stand before the troupe. Amidst it all, the life she once knew starts to give way to the exhilarating possibility of finding a new self in her ancestral home. ‘A novel to savour’ SUNDAY TIMES ‘Captivating…deeply moving’ HARPER’S BAZAAR ‘Powerful… Hammad is a pretty flawless writer’ THE TIMES A GRANTA BEST YOUNG BRITISH NOVELIST * A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR THE TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES, NEW YORK TIMES, WASHINGTON POST AND VULTURE *

About the Author :
Isabella Hammad is the author of The Parisian and a Granta Best Young Novelist. She has also been awarded the Plimpton Prize for Fiction, the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Palestine Book Award and a Betty Trask Award. She has received fellowships from MacDowell, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Lannan Foundation.

Review :
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. 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. 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. 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. There could hardly be a more urgent time to understand the inner lives of Palestinians, which are here depicted with poignance and grace. A richly layered novel... Hammad takes her time, writing with an elegant, confident poise and accumulation of detail this is refreshingly unfashionable.