Sabra Zoo by Mischa Hiller opens in September 1982, at what was assumed to be the end of the Lebanese civil war. Eighteen-year-old Ivan finds himself alone after' his parents have fled Beirut with the Palestine Liberation Organisation. While the city remains under the protection of international peace-keeping forces, Ivan works as an interpreter to aid workers and journalists, relishing the highly-charged political and emotional mood of the city in the weeks leading up to the assassination of President- elect Bashir Gemayel and the infamous Sabra massacre.

The massacre itself forms the centrepiece of this impressive Bildungsroman, as the author charts Ivan's accelerated ascent from curious teenager to suspicious adult. And indeed it's Hiller's evocation of the war through a teenager's eyes that gives this novel both depth and gravitas. Without diminishing the atrocities committed against some 3,500 Palestinian and Lebanese Muslims, Sabra Zoo is a funny novel that reminds us that even the chaos of war can't thwart the complexities of the human spirit and the mysteries of love.