Enter Ghost

Enter Ghost (2023) is a novel by British Palestinian author Isabella Hammad about a production of Hamlet in the West Bank, Palestine. Enter Ghost was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize in Fiction in 2024 and won the Aspen Words Literary Prize and the Royal Society of Literature Encore Award. Granta named Hammad the Best Young British Novelist of 2023. Her first novel, The Parisian (2019), a sprawling work of historical fiction about the birth of Palestinian nationalism, won the Betty Trask Award. Enter Ghost tells the story of Sonia Nasir, a British Palestinian actor who travels to Haifa to spend the summer with her sister, Haneen. While there, she is drawn into a production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet directed by the strident and optimistic Mariam Mansour. While rehearsing the play, Sonia begins to connect with her Palestinian identity and the struggle against the Israeli occupation as the troupe struggles to stage the production in the face of Israeli surveillance and oppression.

This guide uses the 2024 Vintage paperback edition of Enter Ghost.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide include depictions of violence, rape, abortion, pregnancy loss, suicide, and Islamophobia.

Plot Summary

The novel opens with Sonia Nasir’s arrival at the airport in Israel, where she is detained and strip-searched before being permitted to enter the country. She plans to spend the summer in Haifa with her sister, Haneen. Sonia is a 38-year-old West End actor who feels at loose ends after a recent break up with the man with whom she was having an affair, her director, Harold Mashall. She has decided to spend the summer with her sister to bond more with her and get over the relationship.

Soon after Sonia’s arrival, Haneen, a sociology professor at a university in Haifa, introduces her to Haneen’s friend, Mariam Mansour, an idealistic actor and theater director. They attend a play together. Later, Sonia finds a tape her Uncle Jad made of an interview he did with Sonia’s grandmother about Palestinian identity. The tape reminds Sonia of the summer when the interview was recorded. She was 15 years old, and Uncle Jad took Sonia and Haneen to the West Bank from Haifa to meet a man named Rashid, who was dying of starvation following a hunger strike while in Israeli detention. The event polarizes the sisters differently: Sonia vowed never to return to the West Bank, whereas Haneen dedicated her professional life to the Palestinian cause.

Mariam asks if Sonia will fill in during the read-through for the roles of Gertrude and Ophelia in her production of Hamlet that she is preparing in the West Bank. Sonia reluctantly agrees. Mariam and Sonia go to Ramallah on the West Bank, where Sonia meets the rest of the cast of the play. She feels an immediate connection with one of the actors, Ibrahim, who is playing Laertes, Ophelia’s brother. During the read-through, the power goes out in the theater, and the actors continue rehearsals in Mariam’s garden. Later that day, Sonia goes to visit her Uncle Jad, who lives outside Ramallah. His relationship with her aunt makes Sonia think about her past relationships. As a 19-year-old student, Sonia had briefly gone out with a fellow acting student named Aiden. Their relationship came to an end when Sonia got pregnant and had an abortion. At 28, Sonia married a wealthy man named Marco. She got pregnant again, but a problem with Sonia’s uterus forced the doctors to induce a pregnancy loss. Marco and Sophia drifted apart after that and eventually divorced.

Sonia officially agrees to join the play, and rehearsals continue. However, the funding is put into peril when Mariam’s brother, Salim, comes under investigation for his role in soliciting funding for the play from Qatar and Jordan. Sonia travels with Mariam, Ibrahim, and Wael, a young Palestinian singer playing the role of Hamlet, to Israel to secure a new source of funding. At the border, Israeli security detainees Wael for an hour. Sonia angrily confronts the soldiers to no avail. She returns to Haifa, chagrined by the experience. That night, Sonia and Ibrahim go on a date and have sex, but she rejects his advances afterward. Before leaving Haifa, Sonia and Mariam go to see Sonia’s grandparents’ home, which has been sold to a Jewish Israeli family. The new owner confronts them angrily, and they leave.

Back in Ramallah, rehearsals continue. The troupe goes to see the set that has been designed and constructed near the separation wall in Bethlehem. It is large and ambitious. There, they meet the actor Jenan, who Mariam has found to play Ophelia. While they rehearse, Israeli security forces begin releasing tear gas on the area, and they are forced to flee back to Ramallah. There, they get the news that Wael has had a fight with another actor and decided to quit the play. Mariam is disappointed but ultimately resolves to perform the role of Hamlet herself. That night, Sonia and Haneen go for a walk where they run into a man each sister knows by a different name; they realize he has been spying on them for Israel.

Despite being Christians, Sonia and Haneen decide to go to a protest in Jerusalem against restrictions placed by Israeli authorities on the al-Aqsa mosque. Israeli forces attack the protestors, and they return to Haifa. The next day, Sonia goes back to Ramallah.

Two weeks before opening night, the theater troupe learns that the Israeli military has seized their set. They set up another smaller set on a farm in Bethlehem. On opening night, eight Israeli soldiers come to the show, making the actors nervous. However, the soldiers leave without any violence. After the show wraps, Sonia runs into Wael on the street. They decide they will do one final performance of Hamlet near the checkpoint between the West Bank and Israel with Wael as Hamlet. The performance draws a large crowd, but soon after it begins, Israeli soldiers storm the set.