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Extract: Recognising the Stranger by Isabella Hammad

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Read an extract from Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad

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Summer fiction reading list from VINTAGE

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The Parisian by Isabella Hammad

Enter Ghost

**WINNER OF THE RSL ENCORE AWARD 2024** 
**SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024** 
Reeling from a disastrous love affair, actress Sonia Nasir finds love and hope in Shakespeare and Palestine. 
 
‘I absolutely loved it’ 
MONICA ALI 
 
’Remarkable… My heart will never be the same’ 
BARBARA KINGSOLVER 
 
‘Moving and unforgettable’ 
SALLY ROONEY 
 
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. On her arrival, she finds her relationship to Palestine is fragile, both bone-deep and new. 
 
When Sonia meets the charismatic Mariam, a local director, she joins a production of Hamlet in the West Bank. Soon, Sonia is rehearsing with a dedicated, if competitive, group of men – yet as opening night draws closer, it becomes clear just how many obstacles stand before the troupe. Amidst it all, the life she once knew starts to give way to the exhilarating possibility of finding a new self in her ancestral home. 
 
‘A vital storyteller’ 
ALI SMITH 
 
‘A novel to savour’ 
SUNDAY TIMES 
‘Spectacular’ 
NAOMI KLEIN 
 
‘Captivating…deeply moving’ 
HARPER’S BAZAAR 
 
‘Powerful… Hammad is a pretty flawless writer’ 
THE TIMES 
 
A GRANTA BEST YOUNG BRITISH NOVELISTSHORTLISTED FOR THE RSL ONDAATJE PRIZE 2024SHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BOWKER PRIZE 2024 
 
* A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR THE TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES, NEW YORK TIMES, WASHINGTON POST AND VULTURE *

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

Feels completely different to anything else being written right now in English, a heartfelt meditation on the relationship between art and politics.

Enter Ghost retells Hamlet for now, dropping its readers deep into the contemporary tensions of the West Bank, asking crucial and layered questions... Hammad is a calm and vital storyteller, a writer of real rhythmic grace.

A powerful new novel... Hammad is a pretty flawless writer.

Beautifully written, poignant yet forceful, thoughtful and thought provoking, but above all challenging the reader to respond to the question facing the characters in the novel: how to live under occupation while preserving your dignity and humanity? Hammad answers this question through taking us into the hearts and minds of the characters in the novel and through that into the heart and mind of Palestine.

Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran

A thought-provoking and highly topical story about the complex connections to be found in art, politics and family life.

Enter Ghost is a masterful, deeply convincing portrait of the all-too-real consequences of political theater - in both senses. A moving and important novel that presses upon the urgent question of how we ought to live in the midst of the rubble (and ongoing chaos) of political crisis.

A magnificent, deeply imagined story... A thought-provoking, engrossing story about the connections to be found in art, politics and family life.

Outstanding. Next-level. Aesthetically, intellectually, emotionally and culturally satisfying... Isabella Hammad is incapable of striking a false note. She immerses her heroine in volatile territory with the accuracy, compassion and coolness of a surgical knife sliding into a diseased body. The result is a stunning beauty - an eye-opening, uplifting novel that grants its vulnerable cast and their endeavors a rare and graceful dignity.

There could hardly be a more urgent time to understand the inner lives of Palestinians, which are here depicted with poignance and grace.

A richly layered novel... Hammad takes her time, writing with an elegant, confident poise and accumulation of detail this is refreshingly unfashionable.

Compelling... The blend of personal and political feels remarkably fresh.

A stirring novel and a tribute to those Palestinians who have attempted, and attempt, to make art despite the forces ranged against them.

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.

A soul-stirring and dramatic tale of a Palestinian family's exile and reconciliation... The layered text, rich in languages and literary references, dives deep into Sonia's consciousness, illustrating her hopes for what art can accomplish. This deeply human work will stay with readers.

A mature, thought-provoking novel quite unlike any other fiction being written

Artful, political, delicate and bold… an extraordinary interknitting of individual experience and the wider context

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.

A woman reeling from a disastrous love affair finds love and hope in Shakespeare and Palestine 
 
'Magnificent' OBSERVER 
'Different to anything else being written right now in English' SUNDAY TIMES 
'A pretty flawless writer' THE 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. 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. 
 
When Sonia meets the charismatic and candid Mariam, a local director, she joins a production of Hamlet in the West Bank. Soon, Sonia is rehearsing Gertrude's lines in classical Arabic with a dedicated group of men who, in spite of competing egos and priorities, all want to bring Shakespeare to that side of the wall. As opening night draws closer and the warring intensifies, it becomes clear just how many obstacles stand before the troupe. 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. 
 
Timely, thoughtful, and passionate, Isabella Hammad's highly anticipated second novel is an exquisite story of the connection to be found in family and shared resistance.

The Parisian

A sumptuous historical novel, set against the backdrop of World War I, from 'an enormous talent' (Zadie Smith)

Isabella Hammad’s remarkably accomplished debut novel very quickly snares the reader’s attention… Hammad is a natural storyteller... The writing is deeply humane, its wide vision combined with poised restraint… A story of cultures in simultaneous conflict and concord, The Parisian teems with riches – love, war, betrayal and madness – and marks the arrival of a bright new talent.

Breathtaking… Isabella Hammad establishes herself here as a literary force to be reckoned with. The Parisian is, in many ways, an extraordinary achievement.

A stunning 576-page debut, both a lush rendering of Palestinian life a century ago under the British Mandate and a sumptuous epic about the enduring nature of love… a small, beautiful, human story blazing against the enormity of the sociopolitical one… a novel you sink into.

One of the most ambitious first novels to have appeared in years… Written in soulful, searching prose, it’s a jam-packed epic… Hammad is a natural social novelist with an ear for lively dialogue as well as an ability to illuminate psychological interiority… Hammad is a writer of startling talent – and The Parisian has the rhythm of life.

The Parisian has an up-close immediacy and stylistic panache that are all the more impressive coming from a London-born writer still in her 20s… There are intimidating 19th-century precedents – Tolstoy, Turgenev, Stendhal… Isabella Hammad has crafted an exquisite novel that, like Midhat himself, delves back into the confusing past while remaining wholly anchored in the precarious present.

[In] this lavish, leisurely and immersive novel… an English-language epic steeped in Palestinian stories from almost a century ago… Ms Hammad overlays a sophisticated, up-to-date grasp of the scars, overt and covert, left by unjust authority onto the traditional pleasures of the sprawling historical saga… a novelist of vision.

Hammad has an exquisite control on her subject: this is precise writing, measured, and careful… her detail makes you feel the homes and cities she takes us to, and the people that inhabit them, are as multifaceted and mysterious as those of real life… It is Hammad’s sustaining of both perspectives, the minutiae that make up an individual life and the macro political upheavals that change a country forever, that makes The Parisian so impressive.

The Parisian is akin to plunging into a great 19th-century classic, thanks to the languorous pace, easy poise, minute observations and the apparent ease with which Hammad takes her third person narrative from one character to another… There is also an underlying urgency to this rich, luscious novel… The Parisian is a skilful demonstration of how the personal and the political are inescapably intertwined.

You’ll be transported across decades, emotions, plots and people with gravity-defying ease… Uniting themes such as the breakdown of the Middle East (it’s an invaluable understanding into the problems that continue to this day) and the rootlessness of migrants, Hammad creates a real sense of time and place luxuriating in the details of food, smells and sights; take a weekend off and disappear into her vision.

It is startling to think this ambitious tour-de-force was written into life by someone at the start of their literary career… with even the tiniest of details meticulously observed, this debut follows the changing desires of a boy as he is moulded into a man, the irresistible pull of family loyalty and the search for peace, as much within, as on, the global stage.

An admirably ambitious debut... With energy and care, [Hammad] animates a crucial period of Palestinian history that most readers will know little about.

The Parisian is a sublime reading experience: delicate, restrained, surpassingly intelligent, uncommonly poised and truly beautiful. It is realism in the tradition of Flaubert and Stendhal - everything that happens feels not so much imagined as ordained. That this remarkable historical epic should be the debut of a writer in her twenties seems impossible, yet it's true. Isabella Hammad is an enormous talent and her book is a wonder.

The love story at the heart of [The Parisian]… is rendered in aching detail… Hammad has a great eye for the acts of increasing intimacy along the way to falling in love.

Glorious… Hammad asks some fascinating questions about the way narratives have shaped, and continue to shape, our world… Provocative, testing and magnificently risky, this is an author writing for her life.

The Parisian is a gripping historical novel, a poignant romance, and a revelatory family epoch. Above all, it is a generous gift. There is a kind of joy that can hold not only pleasure, but struggle, and even sadness. This novel tells that kind of joyful story, and evokes that kind of joy in the reader.

The Parisian is a lushly imagined, beautifully written, expansive powerhouse of a debut. Isabella Hammad is a great new voice.

An exquisite, intricate and wise novel. I was utterly gripped from the first page until the last. This sweeping, historical epic marks the arrival of a wonderfully gifted author. Isabella Hammad is a marvel and The Parisian is an unforgettable read.

[Hammad cuts] through the familiar dichotomies of West and Near East, placing her protagonist in a rich web of families, political intrigues, and cultural exchanges, and subtly reconfiguring the literary tropes of “home” and “abroad”.

It's a big family novel like Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy but it charts the history of Palestine... The prose is impeccable.

The Parisian is extraordinary—wise, ambitious, and lavishly rewarding. With luminous prose and rare compassion, Bella Hammad offers her readers an absorbing story of war and identity, of love and independence, of hope and history. It’s an astonishing novel, heralding the arrival of a major talent.

With masterful lyricism and unflinching insight, The Parisian captures the personal passion and political violence of a nascent nation’s struggle for independence. Hammad has written a profound and intoxicating epic, brimming with unexpected, vivid imagery and unforgettable characters. Hers is a fresh voice of the first order.

Superb… There’s romance and adventure and adversity… sublimely written.

Isabella Hammad shows a rare maturity, both in her marshalling of a huge cast of characters and in her ability to illuminate such a politically charged period of history without didacticism or literary showboating.

Sumptuous and sharply observed – an old-school novel to lose yourself in.

Hammad taps into the satisfying slow-burn style of classic literature with a storyline that captures both the heart and the mind…This is an immensely rewarding novel that readers will sink into and savor.

An assured debut novel that sets the life of one man against the tumultuous backdrop of Palestine in the waning years of British occupation… Closely observed and elegantly written.

The Times *The Best New Novelists of 2019*

The are moments of such lyric beauty in The Parisian, Isabella Hammad’s debut novel, that you want what they describe to be permanently closed, hers to be the final word… [The Parisian] also has a close grasp of history, and the high quality of its writing never fades.

The Parisian by Isabella Hammad has already won advance praise from Zadie Smith, and deservedly so: this tale of a Palestinian immigrant... is beautiful historical fiction.

Hammad traces her protagonist’s emotional journey with great sensitivity, against a backdrop of historical events… a vivid, capacious historical novel.

The Parisian is a graceful and balanced book, animated throughout by an immense social intelligence… a pleasure to read.

A sweeping historical novel that opens in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire… The Parisian calls to mind a 19th-century novel.

Complex, subtle and challenging… [The Parisian is] excelling––with a powerful ending that is moving in the way it knits together the themes of self-betrayal and social and political treachery.

Reconciling oneself with the pain and pleasure of the ties that bind one to certain people and places is something that lies at the heart of Hammad’s novel… the world Hammad paints is a rich one.

Hammad… convincingly weaves the conversations and arguments around the Palestinian table, inviting the reader to join the friends and family who are full of complexity and humanity, and refuse to be defined by the tragedy that is befalling them… To read The Parisian is to gradually get to know a friend, like drinking tea with a favourite uncle and hearing about family stories, gossip and politics.

'A sublime reading experience: delicate, restrained, surpassingly intelligent, uncommonly poised and truly beautiful' Zadie Smith 
 
**WINNER OF THE BETTY TRASK AWARD 2020** 
 
Midhat Kamal - dreamer, romantic, aesthete - leaves Palestine in 1914 to study medicine in France, under the tutelage of Dr Molineu. He falls deeply in love with Jeannette, the doctor's daughter. But Midhat soon discovers that everything is fragile: love turns to loss, friends become enemies and everyone is looking for a place to belong. 
 
Through Midhat's eyes we see the tangled politics and personal tragedies of a turbulent era - the Palestinian struggle for independence, the strife of the early twentieth century, and the looming shadow of the Second World War. Lush and immersive, and devastating in its power, The Parisian is an elegant, richly-imagined debut from a dazzling new voice in fiction. 
 
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION 2020* 
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDWARD STANFORD FICTION AWARD 2019*

Isabella Hammad

Recognising the Stranger combines intellectual brilliance with moral clarity and profound resoluteness of purpose. This is a book that calls us to witness our place in history. Isabella Hammad deserves our thanks for sharing it with the world

A pitch-perfect example of how the novelist can get to the heart of the matter better than a million argumentative articles. Hammad shows us how the Palestinian struggle is the story of humanity itself, and asks us not to look away but to see ourselves

Without a doubt the most powerful book I have read this year . . . devastating, but so sharp, clear-eyed and insightful that I’d urge anyone to read it

The combination of humanism and criticism in this short book is remarkable, and reminds us not to look away from the situation, as a first step towards answering the searching questions it raises

A clear-eyed meditation on myth, confrontation and the Palestinian struggle for liberation . . . deeply moving . . . Hammad urges her readers to listen, think beyond despair, and speak out

Hammad’s writing burns with fierce intelligence, humane insight and righteous anger. For those at risk of despair, doubtful of the role literature has to play in times of crisis, it is a reminder of the radical potential of reading and the possibility of change

Recognising the Stranger is a rigorous interrogation of the power of narrative, its usefulness, its various forms, and the ways it shapes our modes of being in the world. It speaks to literature’s capacity to invoke moments of recognition, and pushes us, as readers, to reconsider the function of storytelling within structures of oppression. It does this with a deep sense of conviction and moral clarity conveyed by a writer who is, by all accounts, a supremely gifted communicator, and we are all the better for it

Extraordinary and amazingly erudite. Hammad shows how art and especially literature can be much, much more revealing than political writing

Thought-provoking and timely, this lecture celebrates Said's intellectual courage and enduring relevance while highlighting the cruelty in which Palestinians continue to live. Combining both her literary skill and acute power of observation, Hammad weaves together a diagnostic and powerful essay which will undoubtedly be appreciated for years to come

Animated by an extraordinary faith in the power of art to return us to the human in ourselves and each other, Recognising the Stranger is a profound exploration of myth, meaning, the novel, the Palestinian struggle and the work of Edward W. Said. The insights she finds into the present moment feel at once prescient and eternal and the result left me changed

Recognising the Stranger marks an uncharted terrain of literary critique in the shadow of Edward Said, revealing abundant insight about both the method and the intellectual. In this powerful revelation, Isabella Hammad triumphantly teaches us about anagorisis and produces a work that is its embodiment. A moving read characterised by its timelessness and the precision with which it speaks to this historical moment

An urgent work for a devastating time, Recognising the Stranger proves that Isabella Hammad is as fine a critic as she is a novelist. Following in the tradition of Edward Said, she demands an ethical, political and artistic confrontation with the text, the world, and the other. It is hardly a surprise that she is one of our most astute writers when it comes to Palestine

Isabella Hammad’s Recognising the Stranger, the text of her 2023 Columbia University Edward W. Said Lecture published with a new afterword a year on from the event, weaves its literary critical apparatus into an urgent intervention in the Palestinian struggle for liberation

Brilliant and uncompromising… Hammad honours resistance in this time of genocides

On Palestine and Narrative

FROM THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION-SHORTLISTED AND RSL ENCORE AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF ENTER GHOST 
 
Award-winning author of The Parisian and Enter Ghost Isabella Hammad delivered the Edward W. Said Lecture at Columbia University nine days before 7 October 2023. The text of Hammad’s seminal speech and her afterword written in the early weeks of 2024 together make up a searing appraisal of the war on Palestine during what feels like a turning point in the narrative of human history. 
 
Moving and erudite, Hammad writes from within the moment, shedding light on the Palestinian struggle for freedom. Recognising the Stranger is a brilliant melding of literary and cultural analysis by one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists and a foremost writer of fiction in the world today. 
 
PRAISE FOR RECOGNISING THE STRANGER 
 
'Recognising the Stranger combines intellectual brilliance with moral clarity and profound resoluteness of purpose.' SALLY ROONEY 
 
'A pitch-perfect example of how the novelist can get to the heart of the matter better than a million argumentative articles. Hammad shows us how the Palestinian struggle is the story of humanity itself, and asks us not to look away but to see ourselves.' MAX PORTER 
 
‘Hammad’s writing burns with fierce intelligence, humane insight and righteous anger. For those at risk of despair, doubtful of the role literature has to play in times of crisis, it is a reminder of the radical potential of reading and the possibility of change.’ OLIVIA SUDJIC 
 
'Extraordinary and amazingly erudite. Hammad shows how art and especially literature can be much, much more revealing than political writing.' RASHID KHALIDI

Isabella Hammad

Praise for Recognising the Stranger

Recognising the Stranger combines intellectual brilliance with moral clarity and profound resoluteness of purpose. This is a book that calls us to witness our place in history. Isabella Hammad d ...

A pitch-perfect example of how the novelist can get to the heart of the matter better than a million argumentative articles. Hammad shows us how the Palestinian struggle is the story of humanity itself ...

Without a doubt the most powerful book I have read this year . . . devastating, but so sharp, clear-eyed and insightful that I’d urge anyone to read it

Recognising the Stranger combines intellectual brilliance with moral clarity and profound resoluteness of purpose. This is a book that calls us to witness our place in history. Isabella Hammad d ...

A pitch-perfect example of how the novelist can get to the heart of the matter better than a million argumentative articles. Hammad shows us how the Palestinian struggle is the story of humanity itself ...

Without a doubt the most powerful book I have read this year . . . devastating, but so sharp, clear-eyed and insightful that I’d urge anyone to read it

Recognising the Stranger combines intellectual brilliance with moral clarity and profound resoluteness of purpose. This is a book that calls us to witness our place in history. Isabella Hammad d ...

A pitch-perfect example of how the novelist can get to the heart of the matter better than a million argumentative articles. Hammad shows us how the Palestinian struggle is the story of humanity itself ...

Without a doubt the most powerful book I have read this year . . . devastating, but so sharp, clear-eyed and insightful that I’d urge anyone to read it

Books by Isabella Hammad

Articles featuring Isabella Hammad

Extract: Recognising the Stranger by Isabella Hammad

Read an extract from Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad

Summer fiction reading list from VINTAGE

The Parisian by Isabella Hammad

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