Sarah O'Connor

“Perhaps you don’t know this, my dear, but theatre can be very dangerous,” (Hammad 162).

Actress Sonia Nasir comes to Haifa to visit her sister Haneen. It’s her first visit back since the second intifada, and she finds the Palestine of the present much different than her memories of her childhood visits. While staying In Haifa Sonia meets Haneen’s friend Mariam who is directing a production of Hamlet in the West Bank and Sonia finds herself forced into the role of Gertrude, learning the plays lines in classical Arabic, and spending time in Ramallah. As opening night nears, their production draws the attention of violent obstacles as Sonia starts to open her eyes to the changes happening around her.

I was drawn to Enter Ghost because it centred around a production of Hamlet, and if there’s one thing about me it’s that if a book is going to use Hamlet in anyway then I’m going to read it. But Enter Ghost is about so much more than Hamlet, Hammad uses Shakespeare’s infamous work to talk about the Israel and Palestine conflict as well as to show theatre as resistance. It’s a beautiful novel that doesn’t shy around difficult discussions while still managing to be empathetic all the same. I think Hammad does an excellent job at showing readers the reality of living in Palestine now and the different ways that people survive and resist there.

Sonia was an excellent character to follow. I liked seeing her get reacquainted with Palestine and her confrontation with her past as she came to understood the present and find an identity for herself. I also really liked Haneen and her conflict with being an activist as an academic all the while living in Haifa and working in Tel Aviv while still being proud of her Palestinian identity. Mariam was also a lot of fun and I loved her passion for her production of Hamlet and how she was using the play to resist against Israel.

But as some reviewers have said, Hammad writes with a lot of detail. She’s an excellent writer, and I’ll definitely be exploring more of her work, but the amount of it at times makes the book feel a bit dense. But an excellent book all the same, worth all the hype that surrounds it!

Publication: April 4 2023
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Pages: 336 pages (Hardcover)
Source: Library
Genre: Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction
My Rating: ⛤⛤⛤⛤
Summary:

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. This is her first trip back since the second intifada and the deaths of their grandparents: while Haneen made a life here commuting to Tel Aviv to teach at the university, Sonia stayed 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.
At Haneen’s, Sonia meets the charismatic and candid Mariam, a local director, and finds herself roped into a production of Hamlet in the West Bank. Sonia is soon rehearsing Gertude’s lines in classical Arabic and spending more time in Ramallah than in Haifa, along with a dedicated group of men from all over historic Palestine who, in spite of competing egos and priorities, each want to bring Shakespeare to that side of the wall. As opening night draws closer it becomes clear just how many violent obstacles stand before a troupe of Palestinian actors. 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.