Isabella Hammad, 33, was born in London to a Palestinian father and British-Irish mother. Named last year as one of Granta’s best young British novelists, she is the author of The Parisian (2019) and Enter Ghost, which was shortlisted for this year’s Women’s prize. Her new book, Recognising the Stranger, began as a lecture last autumn at Columbia University to commemorate the Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said, an annual event whose previous speakers include Noam Chomsky and Daniel Barenboim. Hammad’s talk, given nine days before 7 October, explored “narrative turning points”, with a particular focus on the story of Palestine. She spoke to me from Manhattan, where she currently has a fellowship at the New York Public Library.
As a novelist, do you hesitate to write nonfiction?
I don’t think of myself as an essayist, and I haven’t written many essays; when I have, they’ve been like this lecture, a creative act involving literary criticism, not straight journalism. I’m a novelist and that’s how I feel comfortable in the world. But there have been times where, under the pressure of my rage, I’ve written because I just need to say something. You know, you work on a novel for years – it’s a different kind of speech act, it’s not making any arguments and you don’t have to inhabit your own opinions. Obviously, there’s a genocide right now: that’s why I’ve been moved to write [nonfiction], just as a person and a human in the world who has felt that need.
The lecture you gave on 28 September 2023 is followed here by a long afterword written in January, three months into Israel’s assault on Gaza. For the reader, the effect is disconcerting in the light of what has passed since.
I found it quite difficult [to write], especially as I’m reciting these horrors, which are horrors, but nothing compared with the numbers that have been killed now. The lecture itself is in this quite contemplative tone, which changes dramatically in the afterword. When something so terrible is happening, it’s not a time to be talking about moral complexity.
