Enter Ghost | Isabelle Hammad

Enter Ghost is a novel about a woman returning to a homeland she barely knows. But beneath that, Isabella Hammad has written something more subtle and ambitious: a reflection on performance, identity, and the surreal experience of living under occupation. The protagonist, Sonia Nasir, is an actress from London who is recovering from personal upheaval. The novel (and Sonia) are stuck between two worlds -  exile and home, language and silence, performance and authenticity.

Set in the West Bank, Sonia agrees to play Gertrude in an Arabic-language production of Hamlet. Enter Ghost mirrors the themes of the play - surveillance, betrayal and haunting. Themes that are not just abstract literary devices, but which Hammad uses to reflect the lived realities of Palestinians. Hammad’s prose is elegant and precise and there is restraint in her writing, making the undercurrents of anger and defiance all the more powerful.

Much like the theatre troupe itself, Enter Ghost can be read as an act of resistance. The characters are not symbols - they’re actors who have been caught in the tension between being watched and asserting control over their narrative. Sonia is a particularly compelling protagonist: an outsider and insider at the same time, gradually awakening to her own complicity, her privilege, and her suppressed rage.

What makes this novel extraordinary is how it expertly blends the political and the personal without reducing either. Hammad refuses easy sentimentality. She invites us to witness the absurdity and cruelty of the occupation alongside the minutiae of rehearsals, friendships, and family history. The ghosts here aren’t just metaphorical - they are the disappeared, the silenced, the unspoken.

Published in 2023, Enter Ghost already felt urgent. But in 2025, amid the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Gaza, it feels absolutely essential. While Hammad’s novel focuses on the West Bank, its exploration of cultural suppression, collective memory, and resistance resonates deeply with the news coming out of Gaza today.

Enter Ghost manages to remind us that art is not a luxury - it is a lifeline, and it is essential. The act of staging Hamlet in Haifa becomes an act of reclamation. A way of saying: we are still here, still speaking, still resisting. Sonia’s journey is a kind of mirror for those of us outside Palestine. How do we bear witness? What does solidarity mean?