Enter Ghost

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.