Enter Ghost

Enter Ghost

Summary

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024**

**LONGLISTED FOR THE RSL ONDAATJE PRIZE 2024**

Reeling from a disastrous love affair, actress Sonia Nasir finds love and hope in Shakespeare and Palestine.

'I absolutely loved it'
MONICA ALI

‘A vital storyteller’
ALI SMITH

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 novel to savour’
SUNDAY TIMES

‘Captivating…deeply moving’
HARPER’S BAZAAR

‘Powerful… Hammad is a pretty flawless writer’
THE TIMES

A GRANTA BEST YOUNG BRITISH NOVELIST

* A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR THE TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES, NEW YORK TIMES, WASHINGTON POST AND VULTURE *

Reviews

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

About the author

Isabella Hammad

Isabella Hammad is the author of The Parisian and a Granta Best Young Novelist. She has also been awarded 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, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Lannan Foundation.
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