Something is rotten in the state of Denmark – just like in the country where they themselves reside. This is the starting point for the Palestinian theatre ensemble in Isabella Hammad's novel "The Ghost in" – a title that sounds like a stage direction.
I wanted to write about theatre, says the British-Palestinian author.
As a teenager, she had a strong experience of the documentary "Arna's children", about Arna Mer-Khamis, an Israeli Jew married to a Palestinian, who started a theatre school for children in the Palestinian refugee camp Jenin on the West Bank.
They were children who later fought in the intifada, says Hammad, referring to the second Palestinian uprising.
It's a very interesting film that goes against the idea that theatre would be therapeutic to silence someone's anger, in fact, it's part of the resistance.
Locales destroyed
The filmmaker, Arna Mer-Khamis' son, then started The Freedom Theatre, whose Swedish friend association reported that the theatre's premises in Jenin were largely destroyed by the Israeli military over a year ago.
- All Palestinian cultural expressions are seen as threatening, says Hammad, for whom Israel is the "settler state" and the Palestinians are the "indigenous people" seeking their identity and historical relationship with the land.
"Hard to write about now"
In her debut novel "The Parisian", also a broad family fresco, she depicted Palestine before 1948 with an older relative as a starting point. The new novel is about the British-Palestinian actress Sonia, who returns to her childhood Haifa. Her sister has moved there, but Sonia is hesitant.
When she visits her grandparents' old house, now sold to a Jewish man, she is rejected. "You are like a ghost to him... we haunt them. They want to kill us, but we refuse to die", says her Palestinian father on the phone from London.
Isabella Hammad finished writing in 2021.
It's not autobiographical, but I was interested in how Palestinians outside engage – or not – in Palestine, she says, adding that "the ongoing genocide" has changed everything.
It's very revealing about the world, about people, and how power works. Now everyone is engaged.
Her upcoming novel takes place in Indonesia and Lebanon.
It's hard to write about Palestine now. I'm writing about something that's historical, not that it's not related – Palestine is perhaps the lens I see the world through.
Born: 1991 in London.
Lives: In New York.
Background: Grew up in London and studied literature, initially thought of an academic career but started writing novels instead. Her debut novel "The Parisian" came out in 2020. "The Ghost in" was nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2024.
Current: With the novel "The Ghost in" that has just been published in Swedish. Also
her lecture at Columbia University in the USA in memory of Edward W Said, will be published in Swedish translation.She held it nine days before October 7, 2023, and has written an updated version later.
"The first well: childhood in Bethlehem" by Jabra Ibrahim Jabra. A childhood depiction from the 1920s in Bethlehem. Published in Swedish in 2001.
"The book of disappearance" by Ibtisam Azem. A novel about an Israel where all Palestinians have disappeared. Published in English in 2019.
"Returning to Haifa" by journalist and author Ghassan Kanafani, who writes partly autobiographically (1969).
