Title & author
Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad
Synopsis
Enter Ghost, Isabella Hammad’s second novel, uses Hamlet as a vehicle to explore protagonist Sonia’s identity as a thirty-something-year-old, diasporic Palestinian woman. Ultimately, Enter Ghost confronts ghosts, but not of deceased individuals; rather, societal, cultural, and historical.
Who should read this book
Fans of The End of August
What we’re thinking about
Art as a vehicle of resistance
Trigger warning(s)
Racism, Islamophobia, miscarriage, police brutality (see more)
Haunting, adjective: “Poignant and evocative; difficult to ignore or forget.”
When one conjures the image of a haunting, ghosts are likely to come to mind. But are they ghosts of the past, or of the present? Enter Ghost, Isabella Hammad’s second novel, uses Hamlet as a vehicle to explore protagonist Sonia’s identity as a thirty-something-year-old, diasporic Palestinian woman (Grove Press, 2023). Ultimately, Enter Ghost confronts ghosts, but not of deceased individuals; rather, societal, cultural, and historical.
“I expected them to interrogate me at the airport and they did,” starts Enter Ghost (Hammad, 1). After landing at the airport to visit her sister in Haifa, Sonia finds herself, and her sense of self, questioned. “They particularly wanted to know about my family links…they unzipped my bags…led me into a different room for a strip search” (1). A scene all too familiar to traveling Palestinians, the interrogation immediately situates the reader amongst a question that haunts Sonia: who is she, and what is her relationship to Palestine?
When she attaches herself to a production of Hamlet in the West Bank, Sonia’s ghosts further reveal themselves. She’s no longer a young actress, and her career’s future is in question. Her failed marriage and attempt at motherhood have left her isolated. She hasn’t visited Palestine and her sister in years, and she realizes she knows very little about her family’s history and present. Her understanding of Palestinian resistance and experienced violence is distant, built on childhood memories, recounts, and news reports. “I may not have locked eyes with this fact yet, but I wasn’t only here for Haneen…I hadn’t prepared myself for this bodily impact, the memory of my senses” (2).
And it isn’t until Sonia begins to confront these senses, her ghosts, her hauntings, that she starts to see freedom. She begins to break from the expectations of others, of society, of the settler state that has taken her homeland. “Did they believe they were guarding against a group of Muslim fanatics? We, the backward natives. Did they genuinely believe they were waging a war against Islam, or Islamists, as they liked to paint it in the media sometimes, when they claimed solidarity with victims of terror attacks in Western capitals, saying, We know how it feels, it’s just like what we have to go through? Or did some of them know what they were really doing? Or was that something they avoided thinking about? Not my fear but my pride was pulsating through me now. Let them think we were fanatical. I did not care. I discovered I was proud that they might think it of me” (271).
“Mark me I am thy father’s spirit. Enter Ghost,” ends the novel (319). The murdered King Hamlet has approached his name bearing son to tell his story and encourage him to take action. As the novel’s final line, the play is cut before we see Hamlet’s arc. An inconclusive ending, an unfinished play. But we’ve seen Sonia confront her ghosts. Just as the line becomes a catalyst for Hamlet, “Enter Ghost” becomes a catalyst in the novel. Through King Hamlet, Hammad brings in the voices of generations of Palestinians, urging the actors to respond. But what happens next is not just on the actors, but also on us readers. Hammad calls us to see the violence laid bare before us, and fight for Palestinian liberation, memory, and self.
“When they look at their soldiers, they see sons and daughters. When we look at their soldiers, our hearts also beat harder, although it is for different reasons.”
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How did the use of theatre (Hamlet in particular) help progress the story?
The characters have at length discussions about art as resistance. How has art impacted your understanding of politics and desire to create societal change? How has Enter Ghost?
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