Art Under Occupation with Isabella Hammad

Isabella Hammad joins us at this year's Book Fringe to talk about her new novel Enter Ghost. Hammad's second novel, set in present-day Palestine, it questions what artistry looks like under occupation - a story of diaspora, displacement, and the connection to be found in family and shared resistance.

After years away from her family's homeland, and healing from an affair with an established director, stage actress Sonia Nasir returns to Palestine to visit her older sister Haneen. Though the siblings grew up spending summers at their family home in Haifa, Sonia hasn't been back since the second intifada and the deaths of her grandparents. While Haneen stayed and made a life commuting to Tel Aviv to teach at the university, Sonia remained in London to focus on her burgeoning acting career and now dissolute marriage. On her return, she finds her relationship to Palestine is fragile, both bone-deep and new.

FREE in person + online - no tickets required

Isabella is joining Lighthouse as part of this year’s Book Fringe: ALT Edition in partnership with two other Edinburgh indie bookshops – Argonaut and Typewronger.

Read more about Book Fringe here

Our Speaker

Isabella Hammad is the author of The Parisian. She was awarded the Plimpton Prize for Fiction, the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Palestine Book Award and a Betty Trask Award. She has received fellowships from MacDowell, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Lannan Foundation.