A review by shimmery
Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad

4.5

 

Enter Ghost is the story of Sonia Nasir, a London born actress of Palestinian descent who returns to her family’s homeland to visit her sister, who lives there. Feeling a little lost after the breakdown of her marriage and an unhappy affair with a married man, she plans to spend a few weeks or months in Palestine, reconnecting with her sister (and herself). Although she spent summers in the family’s Palestinian home growing up, this is the first time she has come back as an adult. The family home has been sold, her grandparents have died, and returning brings to the surface many painful and confusing childhood memories. 

 

While there, her sister introduces her to her theatre director friend, and she ends up agreeing to stand in for Ophelia and Gertrude in the production of Hamlet the friend’s theatre group are planning, until other actresses can be found. Rehearsing with the cast every day, she gets an insight into what life might be like if, like her sister, she had decided to return to live in her homeland. 

 

This was a really moving read, exploring in depth interpersonal relationships alongside the political, themes of identity, guilt, grief, oppression and resistance. The Palestinians are spied upon, controlled, restricted, murdered and abused by a system of violence upheld by the Israeli state; they live in an atmosphere of tension and paranoia, which has many nuances. So commonplace and widespread is the violence that its victims become an indistinguishable mass, however the novel focuses on the stories of individuals who find a way to resist through their art.