For too many decades, we have been given a flat and stereotypical image of Palestine: the image of a people defined solely by conflict. The media has helped perpetuate this reductionist view, but writers like British-Palestinian Isabella Hammad are working to break with this narrative. In her novels, Hammad shows Palestine as the living and effervescent community it is, with ambitions and contradictions, and she advocates for the power of theatre and literature to withstand hostile environments and imagine brighter futures.

Isabella Hammad visits Kosmopolis for the first time coinciding with the release of her latest work, Enter Ghost (Vintage 2024), in which a British-Palestinian actress returns to Haifa to participate in a production of Hamlet in the occupied West Bank territories. Rehearsals plagued by obstacles and the dream of a dignified premiere become the metaphor for lives affected by history and marked by struggle and perseverance. In this dialogue with Xavi Ayén, journalist and head of culture at La Vanguardia, Isabella Hammad reflects on how art is an essential tool in contexts of conflict and how literature can help humanize situations that have too often been reduced to statistics. A conversation that also looks at the future that awaits Palestinians in the current context of violence.