Enter Ghost

A New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book of the Year - Longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction -Shortlisted for the 2024 Aspen Words Literary Prize

＂Isabella Hammad is a master of subtle nuance.＂ -- New York Times

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. This is her first trip back since the second intifada and the deaths of their grandparents: while Haneen made a life here commuting to Tel Aviv to teach at the university, Sonia remained in London to focus on her acting career and now dissolute marriage. On her return, she finds her relationship to Palestine is fragile, both bone-deep and new.

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. Sonia is soon rehearsing Gertude’s lines in Classical Arabic and spending more time in Ramallah than Haifa, along with a dedicated group of men from all over historic Palestine 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 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.

Isabella Hammad
was born in London. Her writing has appeared in the Paris Review,
the New York Times, Conjunctions, and elsewhere. She
was awarded the 2018 Plimpton Prize for Fiction and a 2019 O. Henry Prize. Her
first novel The Parisian (2019) won a Palestine Book Award,
the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a
Betty Trask Award from the Society of Authors in the UK. She was a National
Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree, and has received literary fellowships from
MacDowell, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and the Columbia
University Institute for Ideas and Imagination.