Our Take

Hammad does something remarkable here: she uses the rehearsal process for Hamlet — the arguments over interpretation, the egos, the logistical nightmares of moving actors through checkpoints — to illuminate the realities of occupation with more precision than any polemic could manage. The theatre production becomes a lens, and everything that passes through it is both specific and universal.

Sonia is an extraordinarily well-drawn protagonist: guarded, self-aware, often frustrating, and completely convincing. Her gradual re-entanglement with Palestine — through her sister, through the cast, through the sheer physical fact of being there — is rendered with the kind of attentiveness that Hammad's prose is known for. This is a novel that rewards patience; it builds slowly and then holds you completely.

Readers who loved Hammad's debut The Parisian will find this equally ambitious, though more intimate in scope. For those new to her work, Enter Ghost is an ideal entry point. It sits naturally alongside Minor Detail by Adania Shibli for its excavation of Palestinian experience, and A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara for the way it renders grief and belonging in the body. One of the most important novels of the past several years.