CultureMarginalityPolitics

Enter Ghost: on return, resistance and performing Palestine

Isabella Hammad’s Enter Ghost places Shakespeare’s Hamlet against the realities of Palestinian life under occupation. Through Sonia Nasir, a British-Palestinian actress returning to Haifa and joining an Arabic production in Ramallah, the novel explores exile, memory, identity and resistance. Theatre becomes neither salvation nor spectacle, but a fragile act of solidarity in a world shaped by surveillance, checkpoints and uncertainty.

Pratyusha Pan
10 min read
Enter Ghost: on return, resistance and performing Palestine

Isabella Hammad sets Shakespeare’s play inside a story about Palestinian survival in Enter Ghost, her acclaimed second novel. The story follows Sonia Nasir, a British-Palestinian-Dutch actress in her late thirties, as she leaves behind a stalled career and a failed marriage in London to visit her older sister Haneen in Haifa. She is invited to join a production of Hamlet staged entirely in Arabic, in Ramallah in Occupied Palestine’s West Bank where the constant threat of arrest makes even rehear...

Join the Inscript family today to read the full article

All of Inscript's work, open to subscribers

Investigation, opinion, analysis
at just ₹149 - all of it within your reach

SubscribeAlready a Subscriber? Sign in
Written by
Pratyusha Pan
Pratyusha Pan
0 Followers

Read more

The English Teacher in the age of AI

From Taylor Swift’s literary references to the inspirational English teachers of cinema, literature continues to shape how we understand the world and ourselves. But as AI transforms education and fewer students choose English studies, what lies ahead for literature? Perhaps its future rests on something technology cannot replace: our enduring human need to tell stories, hear them, question them, and find ourselves in them.

Debolina Chaulay
Debolina Chaulay
Tirupati laddu case: What the ED’s latest probe has revealed

The ED’s latest probe into the Tirupati laddu case is examining alleged irregularities in ghee supplies, companies, transactions and records — revealing new details about the suspected supply network.

inscriptinscript
Where does the Idol go after the celebration?

Ganesh Chaturthi 2026: The celebrations conclude with emotional immersions that generate severe waste-management and environmental challenges for Indian cities. Municipal corporations are increasingly utilizing artificial ponds and floral waste separation to balance traditional festivities with aquatic ecosystem preservation.

inscriptinscript
Good-est boy Tucker!

But why Tucker? What did he do to make millions of people globally collectively grieve? He was, after all, ‘just a dog’ on the internet. But was he?

Medhasree Talapatra
Medhasree Talapatra
Fractured Communities: Adivasi Histories and The Politics of Power

Umar Khalid examines colonial statecraft, subaltern political mobilization, and the tribal life of Singhbhum. He shows how British indirect rule co-opted Manki-Munda customary governance to enforce revenue extraction, codify elite representation, and alter indigenous agrarian relations. Tracking this institutional legacy from Chota Nagpur land settlements to Fifth Schedule governance, the book shapes a critical historic framework for debates on Adivasi rights and development in India.

inscriptinscript
After 54 years Pakeezah was almost lost. Again.

More than five decades later, it took another two years to save what remained of the film. From Meena Kumari’s failing health and the death of its creators to a camera negative that had almost melted, Pakeezah has survived not once, but twice—first as a film, and then as a piece of India film history.

inscriptinscript
What Happens When Israel Meets the Kolkata Book Fair?

The Kolkata Book Fair celebrates the circulation of books, ideas and cultural memory. Gaza has witnessed the destruction of the very institutions that preserve them. If Israel becomes the fair’s theme country, can the Boi Mela celebrate Israeli culture without making Palestinian suffering invisible?

inscriptinscript