Enter Ghost: from one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists

Product Information

Now, switching gears, how much did you study Hamlet and what books did you read about Hamlet before and while you were writing this? A] soul-stirring and dramatic tale of a Palestinian family’s exile and reconciliation. . . . The layered text, rich in languages and literary references, dives deep into Sonia’s consciousness, illustrating her hopes for what art can accomplish. This deeply human work will stay with readers.”— Publishers Weekly (starred review) Bethlehem, Nablus, Jenin, Hebron, Ramallah are all central to the story. All are in The West Bank; all embody the spirit of fida’i. Then there’s Jerusalem….. Its useful to keep a map of the region when reading the book! HAMMAD: I mean, teenager, maybe. So, teenager. But then, you know, I studied at university and I found it really hard to study Shakespeare academically.

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. ISABELLA HAMMAD: Yes, exactly. I was on a residency and just writing and writing, and I kind of came upon her. HAMMAD: I was… I mean, it’s a central moment for both sisters. It’s very formative. Both of them, it’s the first time that they’re exposed to a visual example of someone suffering and struggling against Israeli oppression. BOGAEV: Yeah, it does. And it also has this very personal dimension. It’s another moment when this very typically self-involved actor becomes less self-focused.I'm obviously interested in the mixing of literary cultures,” Hammad says, on how she, like her characters (particularly the production’s director, Mariam) sought to mediate “high art” with the homespun. What about her interest in theatre? “I’ve been interested in theatre, in Palestine specifically, for a long time. There was a film by [Israeli-Palestinian filmmaker] Juliano Mer-Khamis about his mother called Arna’s Children… I watched that when I was very young.” This 2004 feature chronicles the working life and legacy of Arna Mer-Khamis, an Israeli communist activist who founded ad hoc theatre group Stone Theatre and an alternative pastoral care system for Palestinian children whose lives had been torpedoed by the Israeli occupation during the First Intifada. It won Best Documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival. HAMMAD: Not really. I mean, I think I want to explore all angles of that. I think that one thing that obviously distinguishes theater from other art forms is how directly it’s related to the polis or to crowds, you know? Whereas reading a novel, we read it on our own, you know? It usually is a solitary experience of art. There’s something about theater that can be crowd raising. I think that that makes it a kind of optimum way of examining that exact question. Until then, they’re only in Haifa and they’re seeing—they’re witnessing the intifada and the uprising through the television screen. They’re sort of in a political environment as children, but they’re not directly witnessing it. This is the, kind of, first instance of them properly witnessing it. HAMMAD: I don’t know that I had any particular revelations about art and activism. I think I… definitely it’s something I, as a Palestinian making art, it’s something I definitely think about. I think about the obligations of art, and its use, value, or not.

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. HAMMAD: I love that. I mean, I think that that’s true. I think that, I mean… maybe in the way that I was moved by Hamlet, struggling inside the narrative framework that Shakespeare has put on, I’m somehow moved by the metafictional, I think. I find it moving because of what it suggests about fate and fatedness.

Hammad is a natural storyteller… The Parisian teems with riches – love, war, betrayal and madness – and marks the arrival of a bright new talent.”— Guardian Why do you think the author made the choice to write specific sections of the novel in the format of a script? Why do you think Hammad chose the scenes she chose, and how do they compare or relate to other theatrical scenes in the book being acted out by Mariam’s company? HAMMAD: Yeah, which is part of her journey, essentially. Kind of the journey of Sonia is a different kind of acting, where it’s less about being an actor in a Western marketplace. Where it’s about her on her own. To being part of a troupe, sort of seeing herself as part of a collective in a more direct way. Which is about, you know, less, a kind of, individualistic, I guess.