BOGAEV: Well, it’s interesting because you have ghosts going both ways in time. I mean, the ghosts are previous generations, but also the modern generations haunt the previous ones as well. Sonia’s father refers to what’s going on as a zombie apocalypse in Palestine. The Palestinians who never left. HAMMAD: Definitely. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about recognition scenes, kind of Aristotelian idea of an anagnorisis, or recognition at a point of reversal or a turning point of the action in a play, and how that might figure in narrative fiction and novels. BOGAEV: Yeah, it’s really interesting because as a child, I can’t really expect her to have come away politicized from that experience the way her older sister was. But I mean, we write our own narrative, right? Of our life. So, this becomes her narrative. BOGAEV: Yeah, and she has these glimpses of it, moments. At one point she thinks, “Nothing is more flattering to an artist than the illusion that he is a secret revolutionary.” But, it is an underlying question throughout the book, you know, what is the value of theater or any art form in a political conflict? Has your answer evolved as you write? What moves Sonia from being “engaged with the political climate by default” (p. 40) to being more actively involved? Discuss the demonstration Sonia and Haneen go to in Jerusalem. In what ways is this form of political protest connected to their production of Hamlet, and in what ways does it feel different?

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.

HAMMAD: Not really. I mean, I think I want to explore all angles of that. I think that one thing that obviously distinguishes theater from other art forms is how directly it’s related to the polis or to crowds, you know? Whereas reading a novel, we read it on our own, you know? It usually is a solitary experience of art. There’s something about theater that can be crowd raising. I think that that makes it a kind of optimum way of examining that exact question. Once at Haneen's, Sonia meets the charismatic and candid Mariam, a local director, and finds herself roped into a production of Hamlet in the West Bank. Soon, Sonia is rehearsing Gertude's lines in Classical Arabic and spending more time in Ramallah than in Haifa with a dedicated group of men from all over historic Palestine who, in spite of competing egos and priorities, each want to bring Shakespeare to that side of the wall. As opening night draws closer it becomes clear just how many invasive and violent obstacles stand before a troupe of Palestinian actors. 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. 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 Furrows Discuss the representation of mothers and motherhood throughout the book, from the hunger striker’s mother, to Mariam, to Sonia and Haneen’s own mother and grandmother. Do these women have anything in common? How does Sonia’s role as Gertrude to Wael’s Hamlet allow her to inhabit the role of motherhood?

I guess that’s a preoccupation of mine and a kind of source of anguish, in certain ways, to be candid about it. Whether or not I can be useful, it’s something that plagues me. But I don’t think that I came to any conclusions, unfortunately. HAMMAD: Yes, absolutely. Yeah, and also a kind of political activism also as being kind of, potentially something that uses spectacle as well.

Transcript

Whereas Haneen, this becomes part of her narrative of commitment, as Mariam phrases it later on—It’s part of what makes her political, basically, it politicizes her—For Sonia, it’s something she runs away from. She finds it so harrowing, she actually can’t really cope with it. She runs. Goes running in the other direction, but it continues to haunt her. It’s the sort of occasion that binds and divides the sisters in this way. KING CLAUDIUS puts LAERTES' hand into HAMLET's HAMLET Give me your pardon, sir: I've done you wrong; BARBARA BOGAEV: I had read somewhere that you finished your first book, The Parisian, and you were just writing to find a story. Just, you know, seeing what came out of you. And this character, Sonia, emerged? Is that how—is that true?

BOGAEV: Yeah, it does. And it also has this very personal dimension. It’s another moment when this very typically self-involved actor becomes less self-focused.Palestinian actress Sonia Nasir finds herself immersed in an essential drama, with repercussions extending beyond the stages she is accustomed to, upon a visit to her older sister, Haneen, in Israel. The women’s paternal grandparents maintained their home in Haifa in 1948, giving the family a foothold both inside Israel and in the West Bank. Haneen and Sonia grew up in London, but their annual childhood summer visits provided them with familiarity and comfort in the Arab world and knowledge of life in the Israeli state. Sonia, who still lives in London, attempts to heal psychic wounds resulting from the unpleasant end of a love affair by paying a long-delayed visit to her sister. A politically aware academic, Haneen has been living in Haifa and working at a university in Tel Aviv. Sonia has not returned to Haifa since before the second intifada and must absorb the cultural, political, and familial changes that have occurred since. Almost immediately upon her arrival, she becomes involved in a production of Hamlet put on by a Palestinian theater company, directed by her sister’s energetic and passionate friend Mariam Mansour. The production is politically charged, employs classical Arabic, and challenges Sonia personally and professionally. When Sonia eventually agrees to undertake the role of Gertrude, she becomes immersed in macro and micro aspects of the production and develops varying degrees of closeness with the rest of the cast, Palestinian theater veterans all (except for the pop star slated for the lead role to attract attention to the production). A thorough and thoughtful exploration of the role of art in the political arena unfolds as Sonia and the troupe work through rehearsals toward performing a tragedy with contemporary resonance.

That novel won a slew of prizes, and Granta included Hammad in its decennial Best of Young British Novelists list earlier this year. 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? Why does Sonia say that her uncle Jad was at least partly responsible for “the greater psychological allegiance of [their] family to the resistance” (p. 41) compared to other Palestinian families in Haifa? Uncle Jad became politicized later in life, while Sonia’s father Nabil was very politically active in his young adulthood. How did this shift in each brother’s political activity impact their relationship to each other, and their relationships to Sonia and Haneen?

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If the younger generation are female, the older family members are predominantly men, reflecting on the armed struggles of the last fifty years. A divided region and divided families as Uncle and Sonia’s father no longer speak. LAERTES wounds HAMLET; then in scuffling, they change rapiers, and HAMLET wounds LAERTES KING CLAUDIUS Part them; they are incensed.