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Enter Ghost

By: Isabella Hammad
Narrated by: Nadia Albina
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Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2024.


After years away from her family's homeland, and healing from an affair with an established director, stage actress Sonia Nasir returns to Palestine to visit her older sister Haneen. Though the siblings grew up spending summers at their family home in Haifa, Sonia hasn't been back since the second intifada and the deaths of her grandparents. While Haneen stayed and made a life commuting to Tel Aviv to teach at the university, Sonia remained in London to focus on her burgeoning acting career and now dissolute marriage. On her return, she finds her relationship to Palestine is fragile, both bone-deep and new.

Once 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. Soon, Sonia is rehearsing Gertude's lines in classical Arabic and spending more time in Ramallah than in Haifa with a dedicated group of men 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 invasive and 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.

A stunning rendering of present-day Palestine, Enter Ghost is a story of diaspora, displacement, and the connection to be found in family and shared resistance. Timely, thoughtful, and passionate, Isabella Hammad's highly anticipated second novel is an exquisite feat, an unforgettable story of artistry under occupation.

©2023 Isabella Hammad (P)2023 Penguin Audio
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Critic reviews

Enter Ghost retells Hamlet for now, dropping its readers deep into the contemporary tensions of the West Bank, asking crucial and layered questions... Hammad is a calm and vital storyteller, a writer of real rhythmic grace. (Ali Smith, author of Autumn)
Beautifully written, poignant yet forceful, thoughtful and thought provoking, but above all challenging the reader to respond to the question facing the characters in the novel: how to live under occupation while preserving your dignity and humanity? Hammad answers this question through taking us into the hearts and minds of the characters in the novel and through that into the heart and mind of Palestine. (Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran)

What listeners say about Enter Ghost

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To thine own self be true

I found the narration very flat and preferred the book, so I would recommend doing in tandem. This should win the women’s prize but I think too traumatic and political for them. Also not every woman’s experience like some on the list. I learned a lot and enjoyed remembering my A level hamlet.

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Excellent

This novel intertwines art and politics, love and loss with beauty and relevance. The narration navigated the forms, allusions, and different languages beautifully.

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Utterly Brilliant!

I have never read anything like this and I absolutely adored it!

There's just so much important, gorgeous, tragic, intimate, horrifying, beautiful, nightmarish, and surreal about this novel and the truth and reality it reflects.

This is another phenomenal book I'm going to need to have time to digest and will need to properly review when I don't have covid brain, but this was sublime.

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Fantastic narrator and an important story.

Will listen to anything Nadia reads! Her voice delivers this book so well.

Enter Ghost is a fantastically told story that feels like a slice of life in a time of turbulence for the characters and the setting.
it makes it gripping, sad, tense and euphoric in moments and leaves you feeling like you want to know where these people go next.

Definitely want to read The Parisian now.

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poingent for the times

I enjoyed the History of the West Bank and the dichotomy of the lives they lived depending on district, religion and nationality. the main character was not that interesting to me due to her self centred nature but overall I liked the story.

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A book everyone should read

If this book had been around in 1978, when I did Hamlet in school; the play would have had a much deeper meaning for me.

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Brilliant Story

I’m impressed by how it’s deeply emotional and political at the same time. It provides a rare understanding of how ‘the inside Palestinians’ or Arab of the 48 deal with their dual identities. It also provides a view of some of the disturbing realities of living in The West Bank.
Great performance by Nadia except for the Arabic reading of whole sentences, I couldn’t understand them although my first language is Arabic.

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A new favourite author

So beautifully narrated, a fantastically immersive and powerful read. I think the only thing that could have made it better would be more narrators, to add to the depth of the characters even further. Having said that, I felt invested in them all even with a single narrator.

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Beautiful story.

What an incredible story. Beautifully written, multilayered and just very poignant. Loved it! The ‘voice’ of the protagonist is very strong, the movement between narrative and ‘play script’ well handled. A joy to read.

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Wonderful novel wonderfully read

I hadn't tried a new writer for a long time and liked the look of this book which featured in the new writers Granta list. I am so pleased I did: Enter Ghost is an insightful and compelling drama about an ad hoc presentation of Shakespeare's Hamlet in Palestine. What is so impressive is the deep understanding of the Arab Israeli conflict and the daily sufferings of both sides (mainly Palestinian) as well as the theatrical actor's profession. The reader reads the Arabic and Hebrew beautifully and is obviously a native speaker. Furthermore it's one of the best performed audio books in terms of chacterisation particularly the I character playing Gertrude, her sister and the director Miriam. Very slight gripes that the parts of the book which are written like a theatre play don't work well in audio book format plus I felt the male characters weren't as well developed and differentiated as the women.

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1 person found this helpful