Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad- Our Review

Be drawn into this beautifully haunting story of a love of pre-war strewn 2024 Palestine. Sonia, an actress, has just fled London from a tumultuous love affair with her married theatre producer and a failed marriage to lick her wounds.

She returns to the troubled city of Haifa to her older sister Haneen, with whom she has always had an intense relationship. Wandering the cobbled backstreets and beaches, she starts to piece her life back together and meets a close friend of Haneen’s, the bubbly, charismatic Mariam, a local theatre director, who convinces her to play Gertrude in a production of Hamlet on the West Bank.

However, creating art under Israeli occupation involves funding and checkpoint harassment, arrests and intimidation, and the fear of whether the Israelis will allow the performance to even occur.

Given that Hamlet’s central themes of the oppressed challenging their oppressors closely aligns with the situation of the Palestinian’s facing the Israelis on the West Bank where the play is being performed, the novel reaches it dramatic conclusion with the opening night when the Israeli soldiers approach the stage to watch the play being performed.

Currently shortlisted for the International Women’s Prize, daily life, even before the current war in Palestine is horrifying and fascinatingly unpacked in Enter Ghost. A truly masterful read.

Review by Nicole @ Great Escape Books