Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative
By Isabella Hammad
Grove Press/Black Cat, September 24, 2024
“Extraordinary and amazingly erudite. Hammad shows how art and especially literature can be much, much more revealing than political writing.” —Rashid Khalidi, author of the New York Times bestseller The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine
From the award-winning novelist of The Parisian and Enter Ghost comes an outstanding essay on the Palestinian struggle and the power of narrative
Isabella Hammad, author of The Parisian and Enter Ghost, delivered the Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture at Columbia University nine days before October 7th, 2023. The text of Hammad’s seminal speech and her afterword, written in the early weeks of 2024, together make up a searing appraisal of the war on Palestine during what seems a turning point in the narrative of human history. Profound and moving, Hammad writes from within the moment, giving voice to the Palestinian struggle for freedom. Recognizing the Stranger is a brilliant melding of literary and cultural analysis by one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists and a foremost writer of fiction in the world today.
Praise for Recognizing the Stranger
“A pitch perfect example of how the novelist can get to the heart of the matter better than a million argumentative articles. Hammad shows us how the Palestinian struggle is the story of humanity itself, and asks us not to look away, but to see ourselves.” —Max Porter, author of Shy
“Hammad’s writing burns with fierce intelligence, humane insight and righteous anger. For those at risk of despair, doubtful of the role literature has to play in times of crisis, it is a reminder of the radical potential of reading and the possibility of change.” —Olivia Sudjic, author of Asylum Road
Praise for Enter Ghost and The Parisian
“Isabella Hammad is a master of subtle nuance.” —The New York Times
“[Hammad] is at once able to trace broad social and historical terrains without losing her grasp of particulars, giving a surgical finesse to her writing about the human personality. Her style is often labeled ‘exquisite.’ These skills put her in the company of other postcolonial literary novelists such as Ahdaf Soueif and Abraham Verghese.” —The Washington Post
“Hammad is not only a talented novelist; she is also a rigorous researcher, and she paints an authentic picture of Palestinian life, whether it takes place inside Israel or in the West Bank… In Enter Ghost, Hammad navigates between the personal and the political in what has come to be her signally seamless manner. She moves across these borders often, almost as if they did not exist.” —Raja Shehadeh, The Nation
“Assured and formidable.” —Wall Street Journal
“Terrific… Enter Ghost, though contemporary, is thoroughly infused with Palestine’s past—and thoroughly haunted by Sonia’s. Hammad, who is both a delicate writer and an exact one, intertwines the two, taking care to give Sonia as many personal ghosts as she does historical ones... Indeed, the novel seems to argue, real growth and connection, both political and personal, cannot begin until everyone’s ghosts have emerged from hiding. Art is, if nothing else, a powerful tool for coaxing them out.” —New York Times Book Review
“[Hammad is] a calm and vital storyteller, a writer of real rhythmic grace.” —Ali Smith, The Guardian
“Can a work of art act upon the world? In a humanitarian and political crisis, what kind of contribution is a play? These questions rise gradually to the surface in the British Palestinian writer Isabella Hammad’s Enter Ghost… Hammad refracts her philosophical inquiry through an elegant assemblage of metatextual layers, filling her novel with plays within plays, works that comment directly on the uses of art.” —Jewish Currents
“Captivating… A deeply moving narrative that illuminates the lived realities of Palestinians in the West Bank, skillfully interweaving themes of resilience, the struggle for self-discovery, and the complex performance of identity in everyday life.” —Harper’s Bazaar
“Hammad uses the features of historical novels to cut through the familiar dichotomies of West and Near East, placing her protagonist in a rich web of families, political intrigues, and cultural exchanges, and subtly reconfiguring the literary tropes of ‘home’ and ‘abroad.’” —The New Yorker
"Dazzling… A deeply imagined historical novel with none of the usual cobwebs of the genre… The Parisian has an up-close immediacy and stylistic panache…that are all the more impressive coming from a London-born writer still in her 20s… Exquisite.” —New York Times Book Review
About the Author
Isabella Hammad was born in London and is the author of The Parisian and Enter Ghost. She was awarded the 2018 Plimpton Prize for Fiction and a 2019 O. Henry Prize. The Parisian won a Palestine Book Award, the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Betty Trask Award from the Society of Authors in the UK. She was a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree and named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. Enter Ghost, a New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book, is shortlisted for the 2024 Aspen Words Literary Prize and longlisted for the 2024 Women's Prize for Fiction. She has received literary fellowships from MacDowell, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and the Columbia University Institute for Ideas and Imagination.
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