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?

Compelling... The blend of personal and political feels remarkably fresh. Sunday Times, *Summer Reads of 2023* A lyrical meditation on Palestinian endurance, the role of theater as political protest, and the undeniable pull of home.”— Booklist 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. Strangely I ended the book not feeling too out of my depth on key moments and places referenced in the story. A feel for time and place built up inside me, as a patchwork as the book progressed. I felt more uncertain on the Shakespeare, having not read or studied Hamlet. It would have helped me if I had a greater knowledge of that work. HAMMAD: Right, which is a very cynical thing to feel. But, in some way, sometimes that can feel true. I don’t think it’s always true, but sometimes that can feel true. What are the ethics of representation? That question, what does it mean to represent suffering? Does it incite the reader or the watcher to action? Or is it—does something else happen?In looking at Palestinian existence – and [impulses like] cooperation, coordination, resistance and making beautiful things under the conditions in which they live – theatre made all sorts of things available to me,” Hammad continues. “I wanted the putting on of a play to be an opportunity, a cipher for other kinds of organising as well. One of the elements of the architecture of the Israeli regime is to fragment – and to solidify the fragmentation of – the Palestinian body politic.” Through Enter Ghost’s all-Palestinian heritage ensemble, Hammad explains that “you get a look at the social drama of these different people who have these different political and social experiences and legal statuses, and yet are unified by it.” BOGAEV: Well, this might be a great point for you to do a reading about acting. It’s right at the beginning of your book, and it really kind of set the stage for me with your main characters. I was professionally skilled at holding two things in my mind at once and choosing which to look at as felt convenient. And not only which to look at, but which to actually believe." 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. A magnificent, deeply imagined story... A thought-provoking, engrossing story about the connections to be found in art, politics and family life. Sunday Times

Sonia researches the family’s past, while at the same time defending herself against feeling. Determinedly a tourist, she drifts through the days carrying a beach towel wherever she goes. Then Haneen introduces her to Mariam, a theatre director. On the way home they stop on a dark road by a house Sonia does not recognise. It is her grandparents’ house, scene of her childhood summers, now sold. “I looked up at the windows again and then, as if standing in a gallery of my mind, gazing down at the stage, waited for emotion to begin. It was like entering a church and expecting awe and holy feelings, except that now I was waiting for grief. In its absence another feeling crept upon me, a kind of exhausted despair.”

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That’s kind of why I was sort of brought up catharsis a couple of times in the novel. Because obviously, catharsis, when you have a kind of cathartic experience at the end of a play in that old model, you’re released of those uncomfortable emotions that might urge you to act. So, what does it mean if you don’t have catharsis? Obviously, Bertolt Brecht was somebody who deliberately tried to explore not giving an audience catharsis as a way to try and make them change the conditions in which they live. The other side of that is that she’s playing Gertrude. And her interpretation of Gertrude and many people’s interpretation of Gertrude in Hamlet is that kind of willful unknowing. “I suspect maybe that Claudius did this awful thing. I’m half complicit, but I’m confused and I don’t want to look there.” How would you characterize the relationship between Sonia and Haneen? When Sonia first arrives in Haifa she reflects that “My whole life I’d been aware of Haneen’s stronger moral compass; it made me afraid to confide in her until the very last moment, until I absolutely needed to” (p. 2). Where do you see this dynamic play out over the course of the book, and in what ways do you think the events of Sonia’s visit complicate that dynamic? Despite the novel’s contemporary setting and political themes, Hammad never lets her character’s trenchant views overwhelm the complex beauty of her storytelling. Here’s Isabella Hammad in conversation with Barbara Bogaev.