Enter Ghost: from one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists

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A magnificent, deeply imagined story... A thought-provoking, engrossing story about the connections to be found in art, politics and family life. Sunday Times Enter KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN KING CLAUDIUS And can you, by no drift of circumstance, Enter Ghost is a masterful, deeply convincing portrait of the all-too-real consequences of political theater - in both senses. A moving and important novel that presses upon the urgent question of how we ought to live in the midst of the rubble (and ongoing chaos) of political crisis. Namwali Serpell, author of The Old Drift BOGAEV: So how does this come down to you? I mean, were there epiphanies for you about politics or political activism during the writing of this book?

Three woman who join together to rent a large space along the beach in Los Angeles for their stores—a gift shop, a bakery, and a bookstore—become fast friends as they each experience the highs, and lows, of love. HAMMAD: I mean, teenager, maybe. So, teenager. But then, you know, I studied at university and I found it really hard to study Shakespeare academically. Outstanding. Next-level. Aesthetically, intellectually, emotionally and culturally satisfying... Isabella Hammad is incapable of striking a false note. She immerses her heroine in volatile territory with the accuracy, compassion and coolness of a surgical knife sliding into a diseased body. The result is a stunning beauty - an eye-opening, uplifting novel that grants its vulnerable cast and their endeavors a rare and graceful dignity. Leila Aboulela, author of Minaret I think this is one of those moments, because an anagnorisis is always a coming to know something you sort of already knew on some level but refuse to look at. Which is itself very psychoanalytic. You’re kind of avoiding—On some level you know but you’re denying it, and then you turn to face it. And that experience changes you.

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Yeah, I mean, I kind of looked at a variety of Arabic translations of Shakespeare, of Hamlet specifically, to try and get a sense of the way he’d been received in the Arab world. BOGAEV: Well you explore it amazingly in this book. You have this great scene of reading through, as a troupe, as an acting troupe, the “To be” speech in rehearsal. Maybe—could you read it for us and set it up by telling us who Wael is? I also, at the time, was reading Peter Brook’s The Empty Space, and thinking about different kinds of theater and their operations. What is live theater? What is dead theater? And so on. BOGAEV: Oh, that is— And there’s a wonderful scene about Shakespeare and Palestinian theater in your book in which the director, Mariam, keeps saying, “Don’t be afraid of Shakespeare.” And the actors all start saying, “Oh yeah, [expletive] Shakespeare.” And someone says, “There’s a version of Hamlet in Arabic that has a happy ending.” Is that true? I wish that the author had committed more fully to making Sonia into more of a mystifying and detached figure, but it seemed that she did not fully want to commit to making her into a flawed, destructive even, person. Ironically, her attempts at making us feel bad for Sonia, by showing us that her family left her out of the loop and those times shitty men treated her badly (who could have predicted that), only succeeded in making her into a bland shade of 'unlikeable'.

If you’re a fan of Shakespeare Unlimited, please leave us a review on your podcast platform of choice to help others find the show. She’s Palestinian, but she’s acting in London. She’s kind of the heir of two literary and political traditions, and seeing the sort of crossover. HAMMAD: Definitely. I think colonial contexts are very theatrical. There’s a lot of performance going on, and costumes and roleplaying. That was definitely something I wanted to play with and to explore.Isabella Hammad is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Enter Ghost is available now from Grove Atlantic Press. Maybe there is a way in which, even though I’m only articulating for the first time now, that I was kind of doing that there. There was a sort of gesture at that within the context of the novel, which is itself an artifice. My character is seeing a structure where fate is kind of like the narrative force, is a kind of fate. Does that make sense? HAMMAD: Wael is a pop star. He is a cousin of Mariam’s and he is a refugee who lives in the West Bank. He’s been cast as Hamlet despite the fact that he has no experience of acting. Largely, because Mariam is hoping to draw a big crowd, and Wael can draw a big crowd. So, this is Wael during the discussion after reading the “To be or not to be” speech.

And the play...I wasn’t expecting chunks of actual Hamlet to make up the narrative but they do. Not only that but the narrative switches to a play/script format more than once even during scenes where the characters are not rehashing. Maybe this will appeal to others readers, but I found this meta choice to be jarring and not particularly suited to the tone of the narrative. BOGAEV: Of course, the other side of that global coin is that Shakespeare is the ultimate literary example of colonialism. Of course, colonialism in this particular political context is very highlighted in your story. How does Sonia’s childlessness, including the story of her miscarriage and abortion, offer a counterpoint that reveals both the burden on women to become mothers and the cultural treatment of women who do not have children? Why do you think Sonia chooses to share her story with Mariam? Were you surprised by Mariam’s reaction? HAMMAD: Yeah. This is—to introduce this—they have just found out that one of the cast, Majed, is going to be interrogated. They think it’s probably because the brother of the director, Mariam, who’s called Selim, he’s a member of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. He’s been involved in the fundraising and has recently been suspended from Parliament. The glimpses into their theatrical production and theatre, in general, tended to be more interesting but were more often than not ruined b Sonia's obnoxious explanations and truisms. A lot of the dialogues were stilted, and even if the characters now and again do say something that is 'convincing', they remain thinly rendered figures.

I'm obviously interested in the mixing of literary cultures,” Hammad says, on how she, like her characters (particularly the production’s director, Mariam) sought to mediate “high art” with the homespun. What about her interest in theatre? “I’ve been interested in theatre, in Palestine specifically, for a long time. There was a film by [Israeli-Palestinian filmmaker] Juliano Mer-Khamis about his mother called Arna’s Children… I watched that when I was very young.” This 2004 feature chronicles the working life and legacy of Arna Mer-Khamis, an Israeli communist activist who founded ad hoc theatre group Stone Theatre and an alternative pastoral care system for Palestinian children whose lives had been torpedoed by the Israeli occupation during the First Intifada. It won Best Documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival. I was thirsty as well, and I needed the loo. And in this state of physical discomfort, something strange happened. My viewpoint switched, and as though I were in a dream, and my perspective had been breached, I moved like a surveillance drone and saw our project from above, situated fragilely in time and space, this summer, this side of the wall. Accompanying this vision was a fear, almost a premonition, that it was all foretold anyway. Everything had been decided in advance. We were only acting parts that had been given to us, and now some inexorable machinery was being set in motion that would sooner or later throw our efforts out into the audience, dismantle our illusions and leave us cowering before the faceless gods of fate and state.” In his introduction to the play in the Riverside Shakespeare (2nd ed., p. 1187), Frank Kermode comments: HAMMAD: Right. Well, that’s because it was an incomplete massacre. So, the Palestinians survived 1948. Many of them did. There was a percentage that even managed to stay on the land, that weren’t expelled, didn’t become refugees. Sonia’s family is part of that population.