Enter Ghost
Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2024
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4.0 • 7 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
**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 NOVELIST
SHORTLISTED FOR THE RSL ONDAATJE PRIZE 2024
SHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BOWKER PRIZE 2024
* A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR THE TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES, NEW YORK TIMES, WASHINGTON POST AND VULTURE *
Customer Reviews
The diaspora within
The author is British of Palestinian heritage currently in her early 30s. She studied creative writing on New York with Zadie Smith. ‘Granta’ magazine named her on its list of Best Young British novelists based on her debut ‘The Parisian’ (2018). This is her sophomore effort.
‘The Parisian’ was a historical novel based on the author’s own family history in Palestine from the end of the Ottoman Empire through to the late 1930s. The setting this time is contemporary. Protagonist Sonia is a middlingly successful actress — sorry, female actor — in London, who is divorced and has recently broken off a relationship with a married director. Her family are Palestinian Arabs, originally from Haifa. Her mother is dead. Her father also lives in London. Her sister, Haneen, a university academic, lives in Haifa and teaches at university in Tel Aviv. Our gal, who has not been “home” since the second intifada (2000-2005, in case you were wondering), goes to stay with her sister for the summer. There she meets her sister’s friend Mariam, a charismatic female director preparing to stage ‘Hamlet’ in the West Bank. Sonia signs up to play Gertrude and must learn her lines in classical Arabic. She learns much more besides.
Ms Hammad is fine writer who mixes spare prose with poetic touches. I did not find Sonia a particularly compelling character, and as a male only child, could not really relate to the tetchy if not actually fraught relationship she has with her sister. However, the nuanced portrait of Palestinian life in modern day Israel (not Gaza) is stunning. It taught me a lot.