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

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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: Wael is a pop star. He is a cousin of Mariam’s and he is a refugee who lives in the West Bank. He’s been cast as Hamlet despite the fact that he has no experience of acting. Largely, because Mariam is hoping to draw a big crowd, and Wael can draw a big crowd. So, this is Wael during the discussion after reading the “To be or not to be” speech.

Then, I hit upon Hamlet and it seemed actually a bit more natural as an option. I was really interested in the fact that during the, I think it was the First Intifada, Hamlet was banned in Israeli prisons. Because the, “To be or not to be,” speech was seen as a call to arms or militant resistance. “To take arms against a sea of troubles. And by opposing, end them.” And that was very kind of provocative to my imagination. So, I ran with it. Compelling... The blend of personal and political feels remarkably fresh. Sunday Times, *Summer Reads of 2023* One of the many ghosts in your book is a young boy from Bethlehem, Rashid, who goes on a hunger strike. Sonia sees him when she’s a teenager. She’s on a trip with her sister, Haneen. It’s her first real experience of the Intifada. Enter KING CLAUDIUS, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN KING CLAUDIUS I like him not, nor stands it safe with us Both works incorporate “the spectre of motherhood”, broken down in Enter Ghost into its constituent parts and corresponding lines of enquiry (“How might mothering be construed differently?” Hammad asks. “What might the role of the woman be in a collective resistance effort? How might it be made anew?”), and both books capture the struggle for power against forces of oppression. “When a struggle exceeds the span of a single generation’s lifespan, there's a kind of haunting that occurs: we are haunted by the people who fought before us and we will haunt those who come after us,” Hammad says. “There’s a kind of mass haunting that's going on – it means there’s still work to be done.”The Attendants part them, and they come out of the grave HAMLET Why I will fight with him upon this theme

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." Powerful... Enter Ghost is a remarkable work by a novelist who writes about Palestinians with the same love and exasperation that one might feel towards one's family. Literary Review BOGAEV: Right, they’re not the godlike narrator. Yeah, they have dimensions and hidden depths or hidden unknowingness.Strangely I ended the book not feeling too out of my depth on key moments and places referenced in the story. A feel for time and place built up inside me, as a patchwork as the book progressed. I felt more uncertain on the Shakespeare, having not read or studied Hamlet. It would have helped me if I had a greater knowledge of that work. 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? Feels completely different to anything else being written right now in English, a heartfelt meditation on the relationship between art and politics. Sunday Times Juliano turned it into the Freedom Theatre [a Palestinian community-based theatre and cultural centre on the West Bank]. I became really interested in the Freedom Theatre and theatre that’s close to the populace – or the polis – in some way.” Hammad goes on to cite the late British theatre director Peter Brook – renowned not only for his work with the Royal Shakespeare Company but also his championing of multinational troupes and productions with international reach – as another cynosure. Brook’s notion of an “immediate” category of theatre – which is characterised in his 1968 book, The Empty Space, as “involving the bringing together of tradition and innovation” – was especially resonant. Sonia’s fellow actors read Hamlet as an allegory for the Palestinian struggle and while she resists their interpretation, she uncovers ghosts of her own—repressed memories, a family history of resistance, and a newly discovered commitment to the Palestinian cause. Despite the novel’s contemporary setting and political themes, Hammad never lets her characters’ trenchant views overwhelm the complex beauty of her storytelling.