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

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How does the author use this motif of the ghost to explore major themes of the book? How is ghost employed as symbol or metaphor to explore the past and various ideas of haunting or else being haunted? Who—or what—takes on the role of ghost in Hammad’s novel? Discuss the company’s final performance at the end of the novel. Why do you think they decided to undertake this particular performance despite all of the known risks? What final lines from Shakespeare conclude the book and why do you think the author made this choice? BOGAEV: Yeah, and she has these glimpses of it, moments. At one point she thinks, “Nothing is more flattering to an artist than the illusion that he is a secret revolutionary.” But, it is an underlying question throughout the book, you know, what is the value of theater or any art form in a political conflict? Has your answer evolved as you write? Haneen is technically not allowed to go visit her aunt and uncle in Ramallah because of her Israeli citizenship. Meanwhile, Mariam lives half the time in Ramallah so her son’s father can visit more often without having to get a permit to enter ’48. How does Sonia’s British passport impact her daily experience in Haifa and the West Bank, and her interpersonal relationships in each place? HAMMAD: Yes. And, sort of, like, becomes part of you. That definitely was one of those books. And obviously there’s a very crucial role played by a ghost in that book. Where the ghost also is more than the ghost of a single child. It’s actually the ghost of a collective.

While Sonia ponders art’s limits in desperate situations (“I had a horrible, useless revelation, which was that in some way the meaning of our Hamlet depended on this suffering”), the novel nonetheless builds to her troupe’s performance, which gains a charge from the defiance it requires. On opening night, Israeli soldiers approach the stage then stop and watch, just as Hamlet plots to put on a play that will force the murderous Claudius to confront his guilt. Suddenly, Hamlet neatly aligns with the situation of the Palestinian players: the oppressed challenging their oppressors through the act of staging a performance. It’s a deeply satisfying climax to an intelligent novel. 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. A magnificent, deeply imagined story... A thought-provoking, engrossing story about the connections to be found in art, politics and family life. Sunday Times Epic… Because the book takes place in the complicated time and spaces that it does, the narrative grapples with sociopolitical concerns as well as it does the intimate, human ones. It sweeps you along.”— Vanity FairThis follow up to The Parisian cleverly reprises Hammad’s treatment of an inescapably political and controversial subject matter (Palestine & Israel) via a human interest story. Be under no illusion though, that this is a book whose underlying messages are serious and horribly divisive. Enter Ghost takes you deep inside the protagonist’s experience while opening a wider window on to life for Palestinians and their exhausting day-to-day struggles. Hammad explores this setting with intelligence and a fine-grained specificity… A richly layered novel.”— The 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? I guess that’s a preoccupation of mine and a kind of source of anguish, in certain ways, to be candid about it. Whether or not I can be useful, it’s something that plagues me. But I don’t think that I came to any conclusions, unfortunately.

Hammad explores this setting with intelligence and a fine-grained specificity that demands the reader keep up. Happily, the story warrants close attention. We follow Sonia, a 38-year-old actor escaping an ill-starred affair with a theatre director in London to visit her family’s homeland for the first time in years. She stays in Haifa with her sister, Haneen, whose friend, the frank and idealistic Mariam, asks Sonia to play Gertrude in an Arabic production of Hamlet she’s directing in the West Bank. The Attendants part them, and they come out of the grave HAMLET Why I will fight with him upon this theme Palestinian actress Sonia Nasir finds herself immersed in an essential drama, with repercussions extending beyond the stages she is accustomed to, upon a visit to her older sister, Haneen, in Israel. The women’s paternal grandparents maintained their home in Haifa in 1948, giving the family a foothold both inside Israel and in the West Bank. Haneen and Sonia grew up in London, but their annual childhood summer visits provided them with familiarity and comfort in the Arab world and knowledge of life in the Israeli state. Sonia, who still lives in London, attempts to heal psychic wounds resulting from the unpleasant end of a love affair by paying a long-delayed visit to her sister. A politically aware academic, Haneen has been living in Haifa and working at a university in Tel Aviv. Sonia has not returned to Haifa since before the second intifada and must absorb the cultural, political, and familial changes that have occurred since. Almost immediately upon her arrival, she becomes involved in a production of Hamlet put on by a Palestinian theater company, directed by her sister’s energetic and passionate friend Mariam Mansour. The production is politically charged, employs classical Arabic, and challenges Sonia personally and professionally. When Sonia eventually agrees to undertake the role of Gertrude, she becomes immersed in macro and micro aspects of the production and develops varying degrees of closeness with the rest of the cast, Palestinian theater veterans all (except for the pop star slated for the lead role to attract attention to the production). A thorough and thoughtful exploration of the role of art in the political arena unfolds as Sonia and the troupe work through rehearsals toward performing a tragedy with contemporary resonance.It’s interesting in the sections in which the actors are rehearsing, you change your style. And you write them like a script, like scenes from a play. It’s a lot of fun. And it gave me a whole different view of your protagonist, Sonia, because we’re seeing her from above, instead of being inside her brain. What prompted that?

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." HAMMAD: Right. Well, that’s because it was an incomplete massacre. So, the Palestinians survived 1948. Many of them did. There was a percentage that even managed to stay on the land, that weren’t expelled, didn’t become refugees. Sonia’s family is part of that population.Enter POLONIUS, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN How now, my lord! I will the king hear this piece of work?

BOGAEV: Well, it’s interesting because you have ghosts going both ways in time. I mean, the ghosts are previous generations, but also the modern generations haunt the previous ones as well. Sonia’s father refers to what’s going on as a zombie apocalypse in Palestine. The Palestinians who never left. For British-Palestinian author Isabella Hammad and her second novel Enter Ghost – a homecoming tale with a production of Hamlet on the West Bank at its crux – such image-making was never far from mind. In one indelible passage, the novel’s protagonist Sonia admits to being “haunted” by the thought of playing Ophelia, a role “trailing significations… like flower petals.” Did the author feel similarly apprehensive about embedding a Shakespearean work and its attendant images within her own? Isabella Hammad is the award winning writer of The Parisian. Enter Ghost is her second novel and a contemporary story focusing upon Palestine - the daily lives of Palestinians under occupation.

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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.