A book I have been meaning to read for a while now is Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad. It has been circling around on various TBR posts since summer 2025, especially because of its setting and it’s themes. This novel is set in Palestine and promised to shed a light on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has been going on for decades, but became even worse since October 7, 2023. Was this book able to provide me on some more insight in this conflict at all?

About the book

An unforgettable Palestinian story of artistry under occupation, from the winner of the Betty Trask Award.

After years away from her family’s homeland, and reeling from a disastrous love affair, actress Sonia Nasir returns to Haifa to visit her older sister Haneen. While Haneen made a life here commuting to Tel Aviv to teach at the university, Sonia remained in London to focus on her acting career and now dissolute marriage. On her return, she finds her relationship to Palestine is fragile, both bone-deep and new.

When Sonia meets the charismatic and candid Mariam, a local director, she joins a production of Hamlet in the West Bank. Soon, Sonia is rehearsing Gertrude’s lines in classical Arabic with a dedicated group of men who, in spite of competing egos and priorities, all want to bring Shakespeare to that side of the wall. As opening night draws closer and the warring intensifies, it becomes clear just how many obstacles stand before the troupe. 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.

Timely, thoughtful, and passionate, Isabella Hammad’s highly anticipated second novel is an exquisite story of the connection to be found in family and shared resistance.

My review

Before reading

As stated before, this book has been sitting on my TBR for months. I came across this one when I was browsing an ebook website, looking for interesting discounts. The blurb immediately piqued my interest, especially since reading diverse is an ongoing reading goal of mine. Furthermore, I haven’t read any novel set in Palestine yet and the history of this country is heartbreaking and yet so interesting. I was hoping – expecting – that Hammad would shed some more light on the conflict, as well as letting main character Sonia grow significantly. Unfortunately, my expectations aren’t met as this novel is indeed good, but lacks in some parts. And maybe my expectations were just too unrealistic, could be.

Characters

This story is solely told through Sonia. After a devastating breakup, she decides to leave London for a desperately needed break and visits her sister Haneen, who lives in Haifa, Palestine. Throughout the book, we get to learn more about Sonia and the reasons why she left London and what happened to her in life, but apart from this, she still remains quite an underdeveloped character. The last time Sonia visited Palestine was after the second Intifada at the start of the milennium, so that has been years ago. She therefore feels estranged from her heritage and roots, which is palpable. Gradually, she finds out she barely knows anything about history and the political side of it. She had such a comfortable life in London and hardly ssemed to care about Palestine. Her actions throughout this book are therefore outright dumb and rather thoughtless. Unfortunately, we don’t witness any growth for her character, she still seems unable to fully grasp knowledge on her heritage.

Aside Sonia, we get to know several more characters, among which are her sister Haneen, her friend Maryam and the other actors in the Hamlet play. I was hoping to learn more through their eyes, but unfortunately, we don’t. Hammad barely gives them a voice and although it’s clear something is going on with several of them, we hardly get some background information which seems important to me at least. Some of the characters really suffer from the consequences of this decade long conflict, but I have the feeling that the author just touches upon them briefly. Too briefly in my opinion. At one point the conflict becomes really palpable, but this was short-lived as well.

Writing

The writing is another aspect of the book I struggled with. Whereas most of the novel is written in prose, there are chapters written in script. This makes sense considering this book is about a group of actors wanting to play Hamlet for an audience, but it was a change after all. Unfortunately, this distracted me from the actual story, especially as I prefer prose.

Plot

When looking into the plot itself, this book could be so much more interesting than it is in the end. Yes, it’s about theatre and the obstacles these Palestinian actors face when just wanting to be creative and share their passion with an audience, but I expected more elaboration on the politics of Israel and Palestine. Of course we get the checkpoints, corruption and setbacks, but I somehow expected more depth to this novel. I find it hard to pinpoint exactly what I expected and what this novel delivers. This story is set in the West Bank, a part of Palestine the news barely talks about. This is indeed interesting, but didn’t add too much to the story itself. I just wasn’t fully captivated and all these different elements play a part in this feeling.

Final thoughts

Unexpectedly, Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad did not live up to my expectations. It touches on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but less in depth than I had hoped for – and maybe expected even. The characters of this novel remain too superficial, the growth I value so much was close to non-existent and I had the feeling we hardly get to know any of them that well to understand the political situation better. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad book at all, but I think I wasn’t the right audience. If you love Shakespeare and theatre, this book is definitely suitable for you, but I just expected a different reading experience and this is definitely on me.