An exquisite novel about art, connection, and resistance
Enter Ghost is worth reading on the strength of Hammad’s eye for similes alone, but the plot, too, proves as insightful and surprising as her first extraordinary novel The Parisian.
Set in modern day Palestine, Enter Ghost follows our protagonist Sonia, an actress living in London reeling from a disastrous love affair. She fleas to her ancestral home to visit her sister, and immediately and unwilling become wrapped up in a production of Hamlet in the West Bank, where she soon finds herself reciting Gertrude’s lines in classical Arabic. Conflict is stirred up around – and because of – the controversy of the play. As opening draws closer, warring and disaster escalate while the actors contend equally with their egos as they do their context of political conflict.
An exquisite novel about art, connection, and resistance, Hammad’s writes Sonia’s search for meaning with a subtle but precise undercurrent; much like Sonia, to read this book is to find yourself wholly invested in something you didn’t know you were getting into.