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Enter Ghost

Enter Ghost

Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2024.


After years away from her family's homeland, and healing from an affair with an established director, stage actress Sonia Nasir returns to Palestine to visit her older sister Haneen. Though the siblings grew up spending summers at their family home in Haifa, Sonia hasn't been back since the second intifada and the deaths of her grandparents. While Haneen stayed and made a life commuting to Tel Aviv to teach at the university, Sonia remained in London to focus on her burgeoning acting career and now dissolute marriage. On her return, she finds her relationship to Palestine is fragile, both bone-deep and new.

Once 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. Soon, Sonia is rehearsing Gertude's lines in classical Arabic and spending more time in Ramallah than in Haifa with a dedicated group of men 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 invasive and 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.

©2023 Isabella Hammad (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Reviews

  • A gifted novelist... Enter Ghost is a moving and unforgettable book
    SALLY ROONEY

About the author

Isabella Hammad

Isabella Hammad is the author of The Parisian and Enter Ghost. She has been shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction and the RSL Ondaatje Prize, and has been awarded the RSL Encore Prize, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, 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 and the Lannan Foundation. In 2023, she was included as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists.
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