Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to examine how Palestinian-British novelist Isabella Hammad’s Enter Ghost (2023) appropriates Shakespeare’s Hamlet since it narrates the story of a Palestinian theatrical troupe who are trying to put on a performance of Shakespeare’s tragedy in the West Bank city of Ramallah. While Hammad draws on themes, motifs, and tropes that the Bard employs in his play, such as betrayal, spying, disorder, and armed conflicts among others, in this paper we focus on how the title of the novel heralds a strong link between the two texts. In particular, as Sonia, Hammad’s Palestinian-British protagonist, returns to her father’s home city of Haifa and realizes that her family’s house has been sold by her uncle to an Israeli family, she seeks answers to the Jewish owner’s unwelcoming reception of her. Her father explains that she, as a descendant of Palestinian refugees, is seen as a ghost by the Israeli owner of the house. This episode, while it links Hammad’s novel to Shakespeare’s play, is also reminiscent of the famous Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani’s novella “Returning to Haifa” (1969), where a Palestinian couple returns momentarily to their house in Haifa after the 1967 war only to find it occupied by a Jewish family since the 1948 Nakba. Thus, as the novel presents the obstacles encountered by the Palestinian theatrical troupe who try hard to perform Hamlet, it also depicts the precarious position that Palestinians occupy in the Israeli community and national narratives.