It's 1982 and teenager Ivan remains in Beirut while his parents are evacuated with the Palestine Liberation Organisation during the Israeli siege of the city. Their departure leaves Ivan free to try and befriend Eli, a Norwegian physiotherapist. To get close to her he agrees to help with the belligerent Youssef, a Sabra camp orphan disabled by a cluster bomb. Ivan also couriers fake documents around Beirut for the PLO. But when the president-elect is assassinated and the Israelis enter Beirut, events take a nasty turn. Ivan, caught up in the horror that makes international headlines, tries to salvage some good from the resulting chaos.
Sabra Zoo is winner of the Commonwealth Writer's First Book prize (Europe & South Asia region)
I was interviewed by Australia's ABC National Radio The Book Show about Sabra Zoo which can be found here. Broadcast on the 27th October 2011.
The Guardian (new edition review)
17th September 2011
Review by Chris Ross
West Beirut, 1982: Ivan's parents (Danish mother, Palestinian father) are evacuated, while their teenage son stays behind to translate for aid workers treating bomb casualties at the local hospital. But Ivan has a secret existence as a PLO courier, carrying fake IDs in between breaks for falafel and casual chitchat with schoolmates. Hiller is strong on the despairing days (every wounded case an individual, the overall pattern inexorably uniform) and the escapist nights: a nauseated blur of vodka, hash and casual sex. His "show, don't tell" refusal to adduce causes directly, but to display their consequences instead comes across as canny and discreet: compromised characters are caught up in tangled affiliations both archaic and seemingly unalterable, and any rhetoric around them sounds woefully formulaic. Ivan's drifting is suddenly arrested by the massacre at Sabra: and orgy of violence that devastates the community. Some characters to manage to change course, but in the camps, the stench of mutilated corpses lingers on.
17th September 2011
Review by Chris Ross
West Beirut, 1982: Ivan's parents (Danish mother, Palestinian father) are evacuated, while their teenage son stays behind to translate for aid workers treating bomb casualties at the local hospital. But Ivan has a secret existence as a PLO courier, carrying fake IDs in between breaks for falafel and casual chitchat with schoolmates. Hiller is strong on the despairing days (every wounded case an individual, the overall pattern inexorably uniform) and the escapist nights: a nauseated blur of vodka, hash and casual sex. His "show, don't tell" refusal to adduce causes directly, but to display their consequences instead comes across as canny and discreet: compromised characters are caught up in tangled affiliations both archaic and seemingly unalterable, and any rhetoric around them sounds woefully formulaic. Ivan's drifting is suddenly arrested by the massacre at Sabra: and orgy of violence that devastates the community. Some characters to manage to change course, but in the camps, the stench of mutilated corpses lingers on.
Red Metaphor
Review by Ramona Wadi
Sabra Zoo delves deeper into the reality behind the distortion of media headlines and propaganda hype. An intriguing novel which allows the reader to bond with the circle of characters who, despite courage, ideals and determination, are coerced into various roles alternating between activism, humanitarian aid, undercover work and helpless spectators.
Ivan, a teenager holding Danish and Palestinian citizenship decides to remain in Lebanon after his parents are evacuated. Whilst working as an interpreter in Sabra refugee camp, he is also working undercover for the PLO. Ivan befriends Youssef - an orphan receiving medical aid after being disabled by a cluster bomb. He also harbours feelings for Eli, the Norwegian physiotherapist who, in turn, is plagued by doubts of her own.
The assassination of the president-elect is the prologue of a massacre in Beirut. A massacre is carried out by the Israeli army as it enters Beirut, and the scene becomes the camp story franchised into international headlines. The stench of war crimes - rape, mass execution and decapitation force Ivan to face the quest for survival and search for Youssef - a final attempt at saving a fragment of humanity from Sabra.
Mischa Hiller's novel exposes the philosophy of war and weapons - a permanent quest of destruction which deems it comprehensible to debate whether it is better to kill or maim, as with cluster bombs. Discarding the formula of narrating the sensationalism of war, Sabra Zoo compels readers to question their role in the wake of atrocities which spectators consider an inevitable outcome. There seems to be a possibility that if people replace staring at images on television screens with the acrid vision of the aftermath of the massacre, humanity might start acknowledging its responsibility towards its own race.
http://redmetaphor.blogspot.com/2011/08/sabra-zoo-by-mischa-hiller.html
Review by Ramona Wadi
Sabra Zoo delves deeper into the reality behind the distortion of media headlines and propaganda hype. An intriguing novel which allows the reader to bond with the circle of characters who, despite courage, ideals and determination, are coerced into various roles alternating between activism, humanitarian aid, undercover work and helpless spectators.
Ivan, a teenager holding Danish and Palestinian citizenship decides to remain in Lebanon after his parents are evacuated. Whilst working as an interpreter in Sabra refugee camp, he is also working undercover for the PLO. Ivan befriends Youssef - an orphan receiving medical aid after being disabled by a cluster bomb. He also harbours feelings for Eli, the Norwegian physiotherapist who, in turn, is plagued by doubts of her own.
The assassination of the president-elect is the prologue of a massacre in Beirut. A massacre is carried out by the Israeli army as it enters Beirut, and the scene becomes the camp story franchised into international headlines. The stench of war crimes - rape, mass execution and decapitation force Ivan to face the quest for survival and search for Youssef - a final attempt at saving a fragment of humanity from Sabra.
Mischa Hiller's novel exposes the philosophy of war and weapons - a permanent quest of destruction which deems it comprehensible to debate whether it is better to kill or maim, as with cluster bombs. Discarding the formula of narrating the sensationalism of war, Sabra Zoo compels readers to question their role in the wake of atrocities which spectators consider an inevitable outcome. There seems to be a possibility that if people replace staring at images on television screens with the acrid vision of the aftermath of the massacre, humanity might start acknowledging its responsibility towards its own race.
http://redmetaphor.blogspot.com/2011/08/sabra-zoo-by-mischa-hiller.html
Esquire Middle East
Massacres usually don’t make enjoyable reads. Yet, in Sabra Zoo — the debut novel for British-Palestinian author Mischa Hiller — a compelling storyline is set against the terror-filled backdrop of one of the Middle East’s worst slaughters in recent history.
Hiller’s rookie novel follows Ivan, a sexually-charged and frustrated 18-year-old, in the tumultuous period before and after the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres in Beirut.
In the days before the Christian Phalange militia kill an estimated 2,000 civilians, Ivan, a volunteer in the Sabra refugee camp hospital, is desperately seeking the love of Eli, his Scandinavian colleague. He spends his days working in the hospital wards and chasing Eli, while his evenings pass in a haze of alcohol, pot and tobacco. But he has other projects too — such as his much more dangerous job acting as a courier for the PLO and aiding western journalists at the famed Commodore Hotel.
The title of the book comes from claims that members of the Phalange militia suggested Sabra and Shatila be demolished to make way for a zoo. Those familiar with south Beirut might also be aware that just a few blocks south of the southern entrance to Shatila camp lies the Ghobeiry municipality zoo — a small, but tidy collection of exotic animals. While animals deserve to live in dignity, it is distressing to note that the conditions here are almost pristine compared with the squalor and indignity in the camps.
Hiller’s success here is to take the challenging topic of the massacres – of which straightforward approaches are gut- wrenching even for the most hardened souls — and frame it in a readable, informative and moving context. Readers well-versed in these events may find some historical segments a little tedious at times. But for a broader audience, the novel provides a solid introduction to those shocking events.
The highest acclaim for the novel thus far comes from former BBC correspondent Fergal Keane, who says Hiller has “written a moving and haunting novel, a narrative for our times.” Keane, the author of Season of Blood — a memoir of his own time covering the Rwandan genocide – is in a credible position to judge writings about mankind’s most unspeakable horrors.
Awareness surrounding the events of 1982 was raised three years ago by the Israeli film Waltz With Bashir and Sabra Zoo’s promotional material bills it as an Arab version of that movie. This is slightly off-putting: the dominant narrative of that event, you’d imagine, would be that of the Palestinians who suffered directly, rather than the teenage Israeli soldiers who later suffered Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. In any case, even with the release of Waltz With Bashir, there has been a paucity of available mainstream material. “It could be that these events still carry a live charge that people want to avoid handling in the West. Or it could just be that no one has found a way of writing about it in a way that has universal appeal,” says Hiller.
Whatever the reason, he isn’t afraid to tackle the subject. His current project is a thriller based on the story of one of the survivors of the massacres and his dealings with a clandestine wing of the PLO in Europe during the late 1980s.
Hiller left Beirut — as many did — in 1982 and has not returned since. While being away for so long might be detrimental for some authors, it seems to work to Hiller’s advantage. The Beirut portrayed in Sabra Zoo is a time capsule, seen through the eyes of a young narrator who, while obviously affected by the events around him, is still interested in more normal pursuits for boys of his age. It gives the story an emotional resonance that history books alone cannot capture.
“If I had gone back, I might not have written the book — or this book at least — because my impressions of 1982 would be overwritten by a different Beirut,” he says.
We’re thankful for those memories. Sabra Zoo is clearly a book that needed to be written. Only by remembering can we begin to understand those dark and terrible days.
Josh Wood - Esquire Middle East
Massacres usually don’t make enjoyable reads. Yet, in Sabra Zoo — the debut novel for British-Palestinian author Mischa Hiller — a compelling storyline is set against the terror-filled backdrop of one of the Middle East’s worst slaughters in recent history.
Hiller’s rookie novel follows Ivan, a sexually-charged and frustrated 18-year-old, in the tumultuous period before and after the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres in Beirut.
In the days before the Christian Phalange militia kill an estimated 2,000 civilians, Ivan, a volunteer in the Sabra refugee camp hospital, is desperately seeking the love of Eli, his Scandinavian colleague. He spends his days working in the hospital wards and chasing Eli, while his evenings pass in a haze of alcohol, pot and tobacco. But he has other projects too — such as his much more dangerous job acting as a courier for the PLO and aiding western journalists at the famed Commodore Hotel.
The title of the book comes from claims that members of the Phalange militia suggested Sabra and Shatila be demolished to make way for a zoo. Those familiar with south Beirut might also be aware that just a few blocks south of the southern entrance to Shatila camp lies the Ghobeiry municipality zoo — a small, but tidy collection of exotic animals. While animals deserve to live in dignity, it is distressing to note that the conditions here are almost pristine compared with the squalor and indignity in the camps.
Hiller’s success here is to take the challenging topic of the massacres – of which straightforward approaches are gut- wrenching even for the most hardened souls — and frame it in a readable, informative and moving context. Readers well-versed in these events may find some historical segments a little tedious at times. But for a broader audience, the novel provides a solid introduction to those shocking events.
The highest acclaim for the novel thus far comes from former BBC correspondent Fergal Keane, who says Hiller has “written a moving and haunting novel, a narrative for our times.” Keane, the author of Season of Blood — a memoir of his own time covering the Rwandan genocide – is in a credible position to judge writings about mankind’s most unspeakable horrors.
Awareness surrounding the events of 1982 was raised three years ago by the Israeli film Waltz With Bashir and Sabra Zoo’s promotional material bills it as an Arab version of that movie. This is slightly off-putting: the dominant narrative of that event, you’d imagine, would be that of the Palestinians who suffered directly, rather than the teenage Israeli soldiers who later suffered Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. In any case, even with the release of Waltz With Bashir, there has been a paucity of available mainstream material. “It could be that these events still carry a live charge that people want to avoid handling in the West. Or it could just be that no one has found a way of writing about it in a way that has universal appeal,” says Hiller.
Whatever the reason, he isn’t afraid to tackle the subject. His current project is a thriller based on the story of one of the survivors of the massacres and his dealings with a clandestine wing of the PLO in Europe during the late 1980s.
Hiller left Beirut — as many did — in 1982 and has not returned since. While being away for so long might be detrimental for some authors, it seems to work to Hiller’s advantage. The Beirut portrayed in Sabra Zoo is a time capsule, seen through the eyes of a young narrator who, while obviously affected by the events around him, is still interested in more normal pursuits for boys of his age. It gives the story an emotional resonance that history books alone cannot capture.
“If I had gone back, I might not have written the book — or this book at least — because my impressions of 1982 would be overwritten by a different Beirut,” he says.
We’re thankful for those memories. Sabra Zoo is clearly a book that needed to be written. Only by remembering can we begin to understand those dark and terrible days.
Josh Wood - Esquire Middle East
The Literary Review
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.
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.
The Independent Monday book
In September 1982, a terrible massacre of Palestinian and Lebanese Muslim civilians took place in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut.
The catalyst was the murder of the president-elect Bachir Gemayel. In response, a Christian Phalangist militia rampaged through the camps while the Israeli Defense Force looked on.
The ensuing carnage provided the climax to Ari Folman's 2008 animated film, Waltz with Bashir, told from the point of view of an Israeli soldier. By way of reply, Mischa Hiller's assured debut novel offers the Palestinian perspective.
Ivan, 18, is like any ordinary kid; he drinks too much, is partial to the occasional joint and is desperate to get laid. But this is war-torn Beirut in 1982. His parents have just left the city with other cadres of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). Ivan, his movement guaranteed by his Danish passport, works undercover as a courier for the PLO.
He is unofficially recruited as an interpreter by the international medical volunteers in Sabra. Much of the book is taken up with Ivan's nocturnal adventures, his encounters with volunteers and patients, and a budding romance with Eli, an attractive Norwegian physiotherapist. But a palpable sense of foreboding prevails. The slow-burning tension finally erupts with the Phalangists' sudden, brutal vengeance.
Hiller's descriptions of the victims and traumatised survivors, through Ivan's eyes, are harrowing and heartfelt but never overwrought. In a few pages, he creates a truly terrifying vision of hell. The unforgettable stench he evokes, the images of dismembered children, and the corpse of a woman who has had her foetus cut out of her, will remain with me. His simple prose is all the more powerful when compared with the almost playful tone used to recount Ivan's rites of passage with Eli. It is a bold shift into the heart of darkness.
Ivan escapes. Others do not. Sabra Zoo serves as a timely reminder of the humanitarian disaster that continues to threaten the majority of Palestinians living in camps, and the precarious existence of displaced persons the world over.
In September 1982, a terrible massacre of Palestinian and Lebanese Muslim civilians took place in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut.
The catalyst was the murder of the president-elect Bachir Gemayel. In response, a Christian Phalangist militia rampaged through the camps while the Israeli Defense Force looked on.
The ensuing carnage provided the climax to Ari Folman's 2008 animated film, Waltz with Bashir, told from the point of view of an Israeli soldier. By way of reply, Mischa Hiller's assured debut novel offers the Palestinian perspective.
Ivan, 18, is like any ordinary kid; he drinks too much, is partial to the occasional joint and is desperate to get laid. But this is war-torn Beirut in 1982. His parents have just left the city with other cadres of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). Ivan, his movement guaranteed by his Danish passport, works undercover as a courier for the PLO.
He is unofficially recruited as an interpreter by the international medical volunteers in Sabra. Much of the book is taken up with Ivan's nocturnal adventures, his encounters with volunteers and patients, and a budding romance with Eli, an attractive Norwegian physiotherapist. But a palpable sense of foreboding prevails. The slow-burning tension finally erupts with the Phalangists' sudden, brutal vengeance.
Hiller's descriptions of the victims and traumatised survivors, through Ivan's eyes, are harrowing and heartfelt but never overwrought. In a few pages, he creates a truly terrifying vision of hell. The unforgettable stench he evokes, the images of dismembered children, and the corpse of a woman who has had her foetus cut out of her, will remain with me. His simple prose is all the more powerful when compared with the almost playful tone used to recount Ivan's rites of passage with Eli. It is a bold shift into the heart of darkness.
Ivan escapes. Others do not. Sabra Zoo serves as a timely reminder of the humanitarian disaster that continues to threaten the majority of Palestinians living in camps, and the precarious existence of displaced persons the world over.
Elle Middle East
“Sabra Zoo” is a gripping novel – one of the first from the Arab perspective – to retrace the days leading to the Sabra massacre in Beirut, following the Israeli inva- sion and the assassination of Bashir Gemayel. The novel is told through the eyes of Ivan, an 18 year old boy whose Palestinian father and Danish mother have fled the country with the other PLO cadres. Alone in Beirut, he helps the cause by delivering fake passports to Palestinian officials in hiding. He also spends a lot of time at the Sabra hospital, acting as translator to the handful of foreign doctors, while fantasizing on the Scandinavian female staff. A gripping story, with touching side characters, Sabra Zoo is also about a boy coming of age in the horror of war. While Israel has just begun to revisit the Lebanon invasion and the black mark left by Sabra and Shatila, Palestinians and Lebanese are often portrayed as one dimensional background figures. Heller, a Palestinian-British author, partly corrects this view, though a lot more introspection needs to be done from the Lebanese side.
When did you decide to write a book on the Sabra-Shatila massacres?
It had been in my head for many years after leaving Beirut in 1982 but I wasn't ready to write it until over twenty years later.
Did it require a lot of research?
I researched the chronology of events leading up to the massacre and various accounts of the massacre itself.
At the end of the novel, one of your characters says that being balanced is a sham, that if you could see both sides equally, then you were missing some vital fact. Do you agree?
I think objectivity is possible, but trying to be balanced, by which I mean trying to remain neutral when there is obvious injustice, benefits only those who are perpetrating it.
In your opinion, how do you explain the current interest in Israel for the 1982 invasion and the Sabra Shatila massacre? Could it spearhead a similar reaction in Lebanon?
I think some distance is needed from events to be able to tackle them dispassionately. As we've seen recently with Waltz With Bashir some Israelis have started to explore what Israel was doing in Lebanon through book and film - that is one of the roles of fiction and should be welcomed even if people disagree with the results. From a Lebanese perspective the novelist Elias Khoury has already tackled some of this history in his Gate Of The Sun.
“Sabra Zoo” is a gripping novel – one of the first from the Arab perspective – to retrace the days leading to the Sabra massacre in Beirut, following the Israeli inva- sion and the assassination of Bashir Gemayel. The novel is told through the eyes of Ivan, an 18 year old boy whose Palestinian father and Danish mother have fled the country with the other PLO cadres. Alone in Beirut, he helps the cause by delivering fake passports to Palestinian officials in hiding. He also spends a lot of time at the Sabra hospital, acting as translator to the handful of foreign doctors, while fantasizing on the Scandinavian female staff. A gripping story, with touching side characters, Sabra Zoo is also about a boy coming of age in the horror of war. While Israel has just begun to revisit the Lebanon invasion and the black mark left by Sabra and Shatila, Palestinians and Lebanese are often portrayed as one dimensional background figures. Heller, a Palestinian-British author, partly corrects this view, though a lot more introspection needs to be done from the Lebanese side.
When did you decide to write a book on the Sabra-Shatila massacres?
It had been in my head for many years after leaving Beirut in 1982 but I wasn't ready to write it until over twenty years later.
Did it require a lot of research?
I researched the chronology of events leading up to the massacre and various accounts of the massacre itself.
At the end of the novel, one of your characters says that being balanced is a sham, that if you could see both sides equally, then you were missing some vital fact. Do you agree?
I think objectivity is possible, but trying to be balanced, by which I mean trying to remain neutral when there is obvious injustice, benefits only those who are perpetrating it.
In your opinion, how do you explain the current interest in Israel for the 1982 invasion and the Sabra Shatila massacre? Could it spearhead a similar reaction in Lebanon?
I think some distance is needed from events to be able to tackle them dispassionately. As we've seen recently with Waltz With Bashir some Israelis have started to explore what Israel was doing in Lebanon through book and film - that is one of the roles of fiction and should be welcomed even if people disagree with the results. From a Lebanese perspective the novelist Elias Khoury has already tackled some of this history in his Gate Of The Sun.
The Daily Telegraph
Set in 1982 at the height of the Lebanese civil war, this debut novel follows the lead up to the murder of nearly 3,000 people by Christian militias at the Palestinian refugee camps at Sabra and Shatila. We follow Ivan, who smokes hashish and runs secret messages for the PLO. This is a gripping novel about the conflict between personal and political loyalties.
Set in 1982 at the height of the Lebanese civil war, this debut novel follows the lead up to the murder of nearly 3,000 people by Christian militias at the Palestinian refugee camps at Sabra and Shatila. We follow Ivan, who smokes hashish and runs secret messages for the PLO. This is a gripping novel about the conflict between personal and political loyalties.
The Big Issue
The expression 'looks like Beirut' is a phrase that has become shorthand for anything chaotic - from a teenager's bedroom to littered streets. For debut novelist Mischa Hiller, it means a very different reality.
The Cambridge-based author moved to the Lebanon with his parents as a 10-year-old in the early '70s. He spent the next decade in the country as it became ravaged by civil war and the tinderbox tensions over Palestinian claims for statehood.
Hiller's novel Sabra Zoo describes the terror-filled weeks leading up to the massacre of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut in September 1982.
The fictionalised account follows 18-year-old Ivan, an interpreter at the Sabra refugee camp hospital who spends his days drinking, smoking, flirting, desperately trying to lose his virginity and carrying out package drops for the PLO.
So why chose now to address what happened then? "I think you need distance from events to be able to treat them objectively or look at them dispassionately," says the author.
"The events of the Middle East still have resonance today. They form part of the history of the people living there. For that reason there are events that people in the West should also be aware of."
Hiller was born in Hull in 1962. A peripatetic youth saw him grow up in Durham, London, Beirut and Dar Es Salaam. He was living in Beirut when the Sabra massacre happened and saw the aftermath, which he says has affected him greatly. The lsraeli Defence Force, who surrounded Beirut's Palestinian refugee camps, allowed the Lebanese Forces militia to enter two of these camps, Sabra and Shatila, where they slaughtered thousands of people. An estimated 3,500 people were murdered.
However, Hiller claims he never set out to become a political author, and insists that his novel is more of a love story. "Ivan has certain naive ideas about being able to get together with Eli [an older volunteer medic], but obviously that's unlikely to happen because she is already involved with someone else," he explains.
"Some of the characters are based on real people, by which I mean that there were people there doing those sorts of things. The people in the book are not those people, though.
"I am in Ivan only in the sense that I used to be 18 and I know what it's like to be that age and wanting things that you've never had before- pursuing women and all the rest of it are the concerns of any 18-year-old. I tapped into my own youth, but other than that he's his own person."
The expression 'looks like Beirut' is a phrase that has become shorthand for anything chaotic - from a teenager's bedroom to littered streets. For debut novelist Mischa Hiller, it means a very different reality.
The Cambridge-based author moved to the Lebanon with his parents as a 10-year-old in the early '70s. He spent the next decade in the country as it became ravaged by civil war and the tinderbox tensions over Palestinian claims for statehood.
Hiller's novel Sabra Zoo describes the terror-filled weeks leading up to the massacre of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut in September 1982.
The fictionalised account follows 18-year-old Ivan, an interpreter at the Sabra refugee camp hospital who spends his days drinking, smoking, flirting, desperately trying to lose his virginity and carrying out package drops for the PLO.
So why chose now to address what happened then? "I think you need distance from events to be able to treat them objectively or look at them dispassionately," says the author.
"The events of the Middle East still have resonance today. They form part of the history of the people living there. For that reason there are events that people in the West should also be aware of."
Hiller was born in Hull in 1962. A peripatetic youth saw him grow up in Durham, London, Beirut and Dar Es Salaam. He was living in Beirut when the Sabra massacre happened and saw the aftermath, which he says has affected him greatly. The lsraeli Defence Force, who surrounded Beirut's Palestinian refugee camps, allowed the Lebanese Forces militia to enter two of these camps, Sabra and Shatila, where they slaughtered thousands of people. An estimated 3,500 people were murdered.
However, Hiller claims he never set out to become a political author, and insists that his novel is more of a love story. "Ivan has certain naive ideas about being able to get together with Eli [an older volunteer medic], but obviously that's unlikely to happen because she is already involved with someone else," he explains.
"Some of the characters are based on real people, by which I mean that there were people there doing those sorts of things. The people in the book are not those people, though.
"I am in Ivan only in the sense that I used to be 18 and I know what it's like to be that age and wanting things that you've never had before- pursuing women and all the rest of it are the concerns of any 18-year-old. I tapped into my own youth, but other than that he's his own person."
The Jordan Times
In “Sabra Zoo”, a fresh, new, translucent voice narrates post-invasion Beirut, adding a personal dimension to realistic portrayal of actual events. It is autumn 1982; the PLO has evacuated, leaving behind a city brimming with those rendered homeless or disabled by Israel’s summer-long bombing. A stream of foreign volunteers has arrived to aid the war victims.
The narrator is 18-year-old Ivan whose Palestinian father and Danish mother - both dedicated cadre of a Palestinian resistance organisation - have evacuated to an unspecified destination. Ivan stays behind, leading a double or, as he says, compartmentalised life. On the one hand, he is charged with being a messenger for the underground work of his parents’ organisation. On the other hand, he volunteers as an interpreter at the hospital in Sabra refugee camp, facilitating the foreign medical staff’s communication with patients and their families; occasionally, he accompanies foreign journalists seeking a story. Armed with his Danish passport, Ivan moves relatively easily between the upscale and secure Hamra area and the Palestinian refugee camps.
Ivan has a foot in both worlds, and is initially happy in his new-found independence. He feels useful as an interpreter in the camps, and has fun partying with the foreign volunteers at night, fantasizing about having a relationship with a pretty Norwegian physiotherapist. Only at times he is haunted by the unhappiness that lingered in his family after the accidental death of his younger brother and the challenge of living up to his father’s history of struggle.
But Ivan is of the new generation. While growing up in Beirut, he had automatically followed his parents’ example of working for their people’s cause, he now ponders whether this is really his path or whether he might want to practice his commitment to humanity in a different way. Certainly, he experiences the world in a slightly different light than do his parents and many of those around him, whether Palestinian, Lebanese or foreigners.
For a first and relatively short novel, Hiller’s sense of character development is rather acute. Besides showing how Ivan negotiates the demands and transitions of his double life and evolving maturity, the story unfolds via a set of diverse, life-like characters who reflect not only events in Beirut but local and world reaction to them. There is uneducated but street-wise Samir, Ivan’s father’s former driver, who divides his time between his falafel stand and driving journalists around to get their story (and chasing women in between). There is the ill-fated militant Faris who rushes to defend the camps at the first sign that a massacre is in the making. There are also Ivan’s former classmates at the American University of Beirut, who are benefiting from the post-war situation to head into the business world, following their fathers’ footsteps.
Among the foreign volunteers are the idealists and the cynical - principled, dedicated doctors, loveable but somewhat pretentious international revolutionaries and those who freak out at the first signs of danger. A similar schism exists among journalists; there are those who seek easily packaged, if partial, stories and those who go to where things are really happening, often obtaining footage too graphic to be marketed commercially. The massacre is the crucible which separates out those who came to serve their fellow human beings and/or show the truth, and those who only came as “tourists”, following the action.
In stark contrast to all of the above, there are the bedrocks of the story, those without whom there would be no story: the patients at the Sabra hospital, the men and women who lost their loved ones in the war, the second and third-time refugees and other camp residents who had no choice but to stay in post-war, Palestinian-hostile Beirut. To the author’s great credit, they are portrayed not only as victims but as resilient, lively individuals, resisting their fate with the meagre means at their disposal.
About halfway through the novel, Ivan’s clandestine work gets quite dangerous as some of his former contacts change sides to work for the Israelis. Even more ominous are the signs that are building up to the inevitable Sabra-Shatilla massacre. Ivan feels his newly created life spinning out of control in step with the overall situation. The rest is history: The multinational forces withdraw; Bashir Gemayel is killed; the Israelis invade Beirut and let the Phalangist militias loose in the camps to enact the now notorious massacre. In the aftermath, Ivan must find a way to overcome his despair, and he does so in an unexpected way.
Sally Bland
15 March 2010
In “Sabra Zoo”, a fresh, new, translucent voice narrates post-invasion Beirut, adding a personal dimension to realistic portrayal of actual events. It is autumn 1982; the PLO has evacuated, leaving behind a city brimming with those rendered homeless or disabled by Israel’s summer-long bombing. A stream of foreign volunteers has arrived to aid the war victims.
The narrator is 18-year-old Ivan whose Palestinian father and Danish mother - both dedicated cadre of a Palestinian resistance organisation - have evacuated to an unspecified destination. Ivan stays behind, leading a double or, as he says, compartmentalised life. On the one hand, he is charged with being a messenger for the underground work of his parents’ organisation. On the other hand, he volunteers as an interpreter at the hospital in Sabra refugee camp, facilitating the foreign medical staff’s communication with patients and their families; occasionally, he accompanies foreign journalists seeking a story. Armed with his Danish passport, Ivan moves relatively easily between the upscale and secure Hamra area and the Palestinian refugee camps.
Ivan has a foot in both worlds, and is initially happy in his new-found independence. He feels useful as an interpreter in the camps, and has fun partying with the foreign volunteers at night, fantasizing about having a relationship with a pretty Norwegian physiotherapist. Only at times he is haunted by the unhappiness that lingered in his family after the accidental death of his younger brother and the challenge of living up to his father’s history of struggle.
But Ivan is of the new generation. While growing up in Beirut, he had automatically followed his parents’ example of working for their people’s cause, he now ponders whether this is really his path or whether he might want to practice his commitment to humanity in a different way. Certainly, he experiences the world in a slightly different light than do his parents and many of those around him, whether Palestinian, Lebanese or foreigners.
For a first and relatively short novel, Hiller’s sense of character development is rather acute. Besides showing how Ivan negotiates the demands and transitions of his double life and evolving maturity, the story unfolds via a set of diverse, life-like characters who reflect not only events in Beirut but local and world reaction to them. There is uneducated but street-wise Samir, Ivan’s father’s former driver, who divides his time between his falafel stand and driving journalists around to get their story (and chasing women in between). There is the ill-fated militant Faris who rushes to defend the camps at the first sign that a massacre is in the making. There are also Ivan’s former classmates at the American University of Beirut, who are benefiting from the post-war situation to head into the business world, following their fathers’ footsteps.
Among the foreign volunteers are the idealists and the cynical - principled, dedicated doctors, loveable but somewhat pretentious international revolutionaries and those who freak out at the first signs of danger. A similar schism exists among journalists; there are those who seek easily packaged, if partial, stories and those who go to where things are really happening, often obtaining footage too graphic to be marketed commercially. The massacre is the crucible which separates out those who came to serve their fellow human beings and/or show the truth, and those who only came as “tourists”, following the action.
In stark contrast to all of the above, there are the bedrocks of the story, those without whom there would be no story: the patients at the Sabra hospital, the men and women who lost their loved ones in the war, the second and third-time refugees and other camp residents who had no choice but to stay in post-war, Palestinian-hostile Beirut. To the author’s great credit, they are portrayed not only as victims but as resilient, lively individuals, resisting their fate with the meagre means at their disposal.
About halfway through the novel, Ivan’s clandestine work gets quite dangerous as some of his former contacts change sides to work for the Israelis. Even more ominous are the signs that are building up to the inevitable Sabra-Shatilla massacre. Ivan feels his newly created life spinning out of control in step with the overall situation. The rest is history: The multinational forces withdraw; Bashir Gemayel is killed; the Israelis invade Beirut and let the Phalangist militias loose in the camps to enact the now notorious massacre. In the aftermath, Ivan must find a way to overcome his despair, and he does so in an unexpected way.
Sally Bland
15 March 2010
Daily Mail
A MOVING debut from a young screenwriter brought up In England and Palestine, this isn't your typical thriller. It's quiet, almost domestic in tone, focusing on the aid workers and volunteers caught up in the Lebanese civil war in Beirut in 1982, which culminated in the infamous massacre at the Sabra refugee camp. Our narrator is 18-year-old Ivan, whose parents have just been evacuated with other members of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation.
Ivan falls in love, but the pretty physiotherapist he admires is tantalisingly elusive. Hauntingly written, with a wonderful touch for human feelings, it builds to a horrifying climax at Sabra. Hiller's characters can barely believe what they're seeing, and you can barely bring yourself to read the heart-wrenching details. A thriller of compelling promise, if Hiller can reproduce its beauty and strength he will be a name to conjure with.
A MOVING debut from a young screenwriter brought up In England and Palestine, this isn't your typical thriller. It's quiet, almost domestic in tone, focusing on the aid workers and volunteers caught up in the Lebanese civil war in Beirut in 1982, which culminated in the infamous massacre at the Sabra refugee camp. Our narrator is 18-year-old Ivan, whose parents have just been evacuated with other members of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation.
Ivan falls in love, but the pretty physiotherapist he admires is tantalisingly elusive. Hauntingly written, with a wonderful touch for human feelings, it builds to a horrifying climax at Sabra. Hiller's characters can barely believe what they're seeing, and you can barely bring yourself to read the heart-wrenching details. A thriller of compelling promise, if Hiller can reproduce its beauty and strength he will be a name to conjure with.
Metro
War-ravaged Beirut in 1982 offers a world of opportunity to 18-year- old Ivan. With his parents evacuated along with other PLO cadres, he has his own apartment and the freedom to pursue the task of losing his virginity. His undercover PLO work is a bit of a nuisance but his ad hoc work as an interpreter at the Sabra refugee camp hospital means his flat has become a meeting point for international medical volunteers: the haze of summer is heightened by alcohol and dope-laced nights, and Ivan’s longing for Norwegian physiotherapist Eli. Mischa Hiller’s well-judged debut is a short, powerful plunge towards an horrific moment in Middle Eastern history – the slaughter of Palestinian refugees in the Sabra and Shatila camps following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Hiller’s characters are satisfyingly complex and their jittery energy is vividly realised. This darkly humorous, often harrowing novel demonstrates that in the chaos of conflict there are no easy or obvious decisions.
Siobhan Murphy
War-ravaged Beirut in 1982 offers a world of opportunity to 18-year- old Ivan. With his parents evacuated along with other PLO cadres, he has his own apartment and the freedom to pursue the task of losing his virginity. His undercover PLO work is a bit of a nuisance but his ad hoc work as an interpreter at the Sabra refugee camp hospital means his flat has become a meeting point for international medical volunteers: the haze of summer is heightened by alcohol and dope-laced nights, and Ivan’s longing for Norwegian physiotherapist Eli. Mischa Hiller’s well-judged debut is a short, powerful plunge towards an horrific moment in Middle Eastern history – the slaughter of Palestinian refugees in the Sabra and Shatila camps following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Hiller’s characters are satisfyingly complex and their jittery energy is vividly realised. This darkly humorous, often harrowing novel demonstrates that in the chaos of conflict there are no easy or obvious decisions.
Siobhan Murphy
Saudi Gazette
This month marks the publication by London-based Telegram Books of the debut novel of a striking new talent in Arab fiction, the Anglo-Palestinian writer Mischa Hiller. “Sabra Zoo” is a searing and accomplished novel that takes the reader back to the bloody events in Beirut in summer 1982 during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The engaging first-person narrator of his novel is the 18-year-old son of a Danish mother and a father who is a PLO official. Ivan’s parents have left Beirut in the evacuation by sea of PLO forces after the two-month Israeli siege and bombardment of the city.
The novel opens three days after the evacuation. Ivan is euphoric: “The war was over and I was parent-free for the first time, with my own apartment. I couldn’t ask for more.” But his optimism is premature, and he will soon find himself caught in a perilous situation. Ivan works as an interpreter at a Red Crescent hospital at Sabra Palestinian refugee camp, which is treating victims of the siege and bombardment. During the siege, nearly 7,000 people were killed and 30,000 wounded, more than 80 percent of them civilians from West Beirut. More than 2,000 of those seriously wounded were burnt by phosphorus bombs.
Ivan is street-wise and witty, yet vulnerable. He is constantly distracted by the attractions of women and is eager for experience. He is particularly drawn to Norwegian physiotherapist Eli, an older married woman with a son. Ivan is, to some extent, an outsider, with his mixed parentage, part-European looks and education at a school in Copenhagen. Those meeting him for the first time often ask about his Russian-sounding name. Hiller lived in Beirut himself for 10 years on and off, leaving in winter 1982. In writing the novel “I used some of my experience briefly interpreting for foreign medics and journalists in 1982, although I want to be very clear that this is definitely a work of fiction and not my story,” he told Saudi Gazette. “My experience did provide the feel, emotion and even humor of the situation and hopefully allowed me to create a compelling point of view in Ivan – although I suspect his preoccupations are the same as teenage boys everywhere.”
Hiller delineates his characters, even minor ones, with skill, and the dialogue is expertly pitched. These qualities are apparent in Ivan’s interactions with the team of international medical volunteers. They include diminutive strong-minded Dr. Asha Patel and Scottish doctor John. The medical team members work intensively in the day and party hard at night.
One of Ivan’s closest buddies is his Lebanese driver, Samir, who had also been the driver of Ivan’s father. Samir also runs a little café, taking pride in his “special sauce.” He may have a crude womanizing side, but he is at the same time a warm and endearing character. Ivan gradually reveals to the reader that his parents’ marriage has been crumbling since the accidental death some years earlier of his younger brother Karam in a fall from a balcony.
When Eli asks Ivan to help with a patient Youssef, a patient in his early teens whose foot has been badly damaged by an Israeli cluster bomb, Ivan is reminded of Karam who would have been of a similar age to Youssef were he still alive. Youssef is reluctant to try using crutches, and Ivan manages to get him to have a go. He becomes increasingly involved in helping Youssef back to recovery.
Ivan is leading a compartmentalized life, of which his work at the hospital is only one part. He has remained in Beirut at the request of a PLO official so as to courier forged documents and passports between PLO cadres who are living in hiding. Ivan’s Danish passport allows him to move relatively easily around the city. But there is a traitor among the comrades.
At the same time he works for an American TV company which brings him into the world of international journalists crowded into the Commodore Hotel. This adds a dimension to the novel of seeing the violence through the eyes and recordings of Bob, the American for whom Ivan translates. Matters become increasingly precarious after the Commander of the Lebanese Forces and President-Elect Bashir Gemayel is assassinated. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) invade West Beirut and their Phalangist allies conduct raids. There is tension on every corner, and hooded informers betray people at roadblocks. An atmosphere of paranoia and danger builds up.
The Palestinian refugee camps after the PLO withdrawal have been left exposed and defenseless. The violence culminates in one of the most ghastly episodes in the modern history of the Middle East: the massacre of hundreds or thousands of Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, under the noses of the IDF. The Israeli government’s Kahan Inquiry of 1983 concluded that while the Phalangists were directly responsible for the massacre, Israeli forces were indirectly responsible. The report ultimately forced the reluctant resignation of Ariel Sharon as Defense Minister, but this was only a temporary blip in his brutal record in relation to the Palestinians. “Sabra Zoo” is a fast-paced read with an economical style, and readily lends itself to a film treatment. Hiller wrote a film adaptation after completing the novel, while waiting for it to be sold to a publisher, “simply because I had always wanted to write a screenplay and love film as a story-telling medium.” In 2009 his screenplay won the European Independent Film Festival script competition.
Hiller says: “I did not study creative writing as such, but read a lot of screenplays to see how it was done. Since my writing style is sparse anyway, I was attracted to the idea that you can tell a story in 90 to 120 pages of double-spaced type, which is the ultimate in stripped-down writing.”
Hiller is now working on his second novel, in which “an orphaned survivor of the events of Sabra and Shatila is groomed and recruited by a mysterious PLO member to work for him secretly in Europe.” The sale of the book has yet to be finalized, but Hiller hopes that it will be published next year. – SG
This month marks the publication by London-based Telegram Books of the debut novel of a striking new talent in Arab fiction, the Anglo-Palestinian writer Mischa Hiller. “Sabra Zoo” is a searing and accomplished novel that takes the reader back to the bloody events in Beirut in summer 1982 during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The engaging first-person narrator of his novel is the 18-year-old son of a Danish mother and a father who is a PLO official. Ivan’s parents have left Beirut in the evacuation by sea of PLO forces after the two-month Israeli siege and bombardment of the city.
The novel opens three days after the evacuation. Ivan is euphoric: “The war was over and I was parent-free for the first time, with my own apartment. I couldn’t ask for more.” But his optimism is premature, and he will soon find himself caught in a perilous situation. Ivan works as an interpreter at a Red Crescent hospital at Sabra Palestinian refugee camp, which is treating victims of the siege and bombardment. During the siege, nearly 7,000 people were killed and 30,000 wounded, more than 80 percent of them civilians from West Beirut. More than 2,000 of those seriously wounded were burnt by phosphorus bombs.
Ivan is street-wise and witty, yet vulnerable. He is constantly distracted by the attractions of women and is eager for experience. He is particularly drawn to Norwegian physiotherapist Eli, an older married woman with a son. Ivan is, to some extent, an outsider, with his mixed parentage, part-European looks and education at a school in Copenhagen. Those meeting him for the first time often ask about his Russian-sounding name. Hiller lived in Beirut himself for 10 years on and off, leaving in winter 1982. In writing the novel “I used some of my experience briefly interpreting for foreign medics and journalists in 1982, although I want to be very clear that this is definitely a work of fiction and not my story,” he told Saudi Gazette. “My experience did provide the feel, emotion and even humor of the situation and hopefully allowed me to create a compelling point of view in Ivan – although I suspect his preoccupations are the same as teenage boys everywhere.”
Hiller delineates his characters, even minor ones, with skill, and the dialogue is expertly pitched. These qualities are apparent in Ivan’s interactions with the team of international medical volunteers. They include diminutive strong-minded Dr. Asha Patel and Scottish doctor John. The medical team members work intensively in the day and party hard at night.
One of Ivan’s closest buddies is his Lebanese driver, Samir, who had also been the driver of Ivan’s father. Samir also runs a little café, taking pride in his “special sauce.” He may have a crude womanizing side, but he is at the same time a warm and endearing character. Ivan gradually reveals to the reader that his parents’ marriage has been crumbling since the accidental death some years earlier of his younger brother Karam in a fall from a balcony.
When Eli asks Ivan to help with a patient Youssef, a patient in his early teens whose foot has been badly damaged by an Israeli cluster bomb, Ivan is reminded of Karam who would have been of a similar age to Youssef were he still alive. Youssef is reluctant to try using crutches, and Ivan manages to get him to have a go. He becomes increasingly involved in helping Youssef back to recovery.
Ivan is leading a compartmentalized life, of which his work at the hospital is only one part. He has remained in Beirut at the request of a PLO official so as to courier forged documents and passports between PLO cadres who are living in hiding. Ivan’s Danish passport allows him to move relatively easily around the city. But there is a traitor among the comrades.
At the same time he works for an American TV company which brings him into the world of international journalists crowded into the Commodore Hotel. This adds a dimension to the novel of seeing the violence through the eyes and recordings of Bob, the American for whom Ivan translates. Matters become increasingly precarious after the Commander of the Lebanese Forces and President-Elect Bashir Gemayel is assassinated. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) invade West Beirut and their Phalangist allies conduct raids. There is tension on every corner, and hooded informers betray people at roadblocks. An atmosphere of paranoia and danger builds up.
The Palestinian refugee camps after the PLO withdrawal have been left exposed and defenseless. The violence culminates in one of the most ghastly episodes in the modern history of the Middle East: the massacre of hundreds or thousands of Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, under the noses of the IDF. The Israeli government’s Kahan Inquiry of 1983 concluded that while the Phalangists were directly responsible for the massacre, Israeli forces were indirectly responsible. The report ultimately forced the reluctant resignation of Ariel Sharon as Defense Minister, but this was only a temporary blip in his brutal record in relation to the Palestinians. “Sabra Zoo” is a fast-paced read with an economical style, and readily lends itself to a film treatment. Hiller wrote a film adaptation after completing the novel, while waiting for it to be sold to a publisher, “simply because I had always wanted to write a screenplay and love film as a story-telling medium.” In 2009 his screenplay won the European Independent Film Festival script competition.
Hiller says: “I did not study creative writing as such, but read a lot of screenplays to see how it was done. Since my writing style is sparse anyway, I was attracted to the idea that you can tell a story in 90 to 120 pages of double-spaced type, which is the ultimate in stripped-down writing.”
Hiller is now working on his second novel, in which “an orphaned survivor of the events of Sabra and Shatila is groomed and recruited by a mysterious PLO member to work for him secretly in Europe.” The sale of the book has yet to be finalized, but Hiller hopes that it will be published next year. – SG
The Guardian
Twenty years after the civil war ended, Beirut is again a holiday destination; boutique hotels have risen from the rubble and wealth swaggers once more along the Corniche. This brief, explosive account of the weeks leading up to the massacre of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in September 1982 is a timely reminder of Lebanon's divided past and precarious future. Ivan is 18, half-Danish, half-Palestinian; his politically implicated parents have left for a safer country, yet he remains to act as interpreter for trauma cases at the hospital within the camp at Sabra. Unbeknown to the international volunteers there he is also an underground messenger for the Palestinians. Time seems suspended; senses are heightened. Worldly-wise though innocent, Ivan is drawn to older Norwegian physiotherapist Eli and enraged orphan Youssef; just two of the exhausted, impassioned characters in Hiller's stunning, defiant debut.
Catherine Taylor
Twenty years after the civil war ended, Beirut is again a holiday destination; boutique hotels have risen from the rubble and wealth swaggers once more along the Corniche. This brief, explosive account of the weeks leading up to the massacre of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in September 1982 is a timely reminder of Lebanon's divided past and precarious future. Ivan is 18, half-Danish, half-Palestinian; his politically implicated parents have left for a safer country, yet he remains to act as interpreter for trauma cases at the hospital within the camp at Sabra. Unbeknown to the international volunteers there he is also an underground messenger for the Palestinians. Time seems suspended; senses are heightened. Worldly-wise though innocent, Ivan is drawn to older Norwegian physiotherapist Eli and enraged orphan Youssef; just two of the exhausted, impassioned characters in Hiller's stunning, defiant debut.
Catherine Taylor
A Common Reader
I value my independence as a book reviewer and rarely accept invitations to interview authors and to promote their books, but I am making an exception for Sabra Zoo by Mischa Hiller, published by the excellent Telegram Books. I rate this as a very fine book which deserves as much exposure as it can get, so I shall make some opening remarks about the book and then publish Mischa's answers to my questions.
I enjoyed reading Sabra Zoo for its fast-paced narrative and insights into an event that is fast-fading from public memory, the Sabra Refugee Camp massacre in 1982. This fictionalised account follows a year or two in the life of Ivan, an 18 year old man with Danish and Palestinian parentage, the fortunate possessor of a Danish passport which provides him with the ability to survive the many road-blocks and searches that are an inevitable part of life during the Lebanese Civil War.
The book opens with Beirut in a state of chaos: "It was July, the siege was settling nicely into a routine that people could understand: the water had been cut off, the electricity had died, the city had been pounded with big bombs, peppered with small, a ceasefire was announced and then it started all over again".
Ivan's parents have returned to Denmark and he lives in the apartment they vacated, while working as a free-lance translator in the hospitals where Western aid-workers deal with the injuries arising from the conflict. Ivan's apartment becomes a meeting place for aid-workers and young Lebanese and Ivan finds himself sharing food and beds with a variety of people, including the Norwegian doctor Eli.
Almost inevitably, Ivan develops a strong attachment to Eli, despite a significant age-gap, but Eli finds it hard to see him as a potential lover. Mischa Hiller captures well the longing of a young man for a more sophisticated and older woman as they work together in close contact in the hospital. The wards are full of despair, with children and young people coming to terms with horrific injuries in various ways.
Ivan accompanies Eli on her hospital rounds and meets Youseff, a young boy who has been badly injured by kicking a cluster bomb while playing football. Far from being grateful for the treatment he receives in the hospital, Youssef responds to attempted conversation with a range of creative obscenities. Despite the difficulties, Ivan finds himself befriending Youseff and encouraging him to walk again despite the immense pain this causes him. Later we read of the BBC coming to film a story about the children in the hospital but rejecting Youssef because he is "difficult" in favour of a more visually acceptable young girl with a prosthetic limb.
The city becomes increasingly chaotic and the aid workers and their co-workers mirror the chaos in their own lives with increasing amounts of alcohol, dossing-down in various surviving apartments where food and cigarettes are shared while the opportunities to do so continue.
In the second half of the novel events escalate, with Israeli jets breaking the sound barrier at low-level above the city as a prelude to the terrible events about to happen at Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Western government fail to act to prevent the ongoing terror as Lebanese Phalangist (Christian) forces, protected by the Israelis, work through the refugee camps killing whoever they find there. Ivan and his friends and colleagues try to get into the camp but are turned away, returning after the Phalangists have left to find a scenes of horror and devastation.
This book works on several levels. Firstly as a human story, with Ivan living as normal a life as he can while dealing with daily stress at a level few of us have to experience. Secondly as a dramatic picture of a city under seige, its people struggling to continue with their lives despite their forced return to primitive living conditions. Thirdly as a reminder of the terrible injustices wreaked upon Palestinians and in particular the terrible events which took place in the refugee camps in 1982.
Sabra Zoo joins the ranks of an increasing number of novels set in the Middle East. Western readers are discovering a world very different from their own, but one which provides (as in Sabra Zoo) some compelling human stories set in a fast-moving world where guns and bombs form the backdrop to daily life. I am very pleased that Mischa Hiller has prepared a prize-winning screenplay for Sabra Zoo and hope that a film studio soon recognises its dramatic potential.
And now for the interview with author Mischa Hiller:
Were you very conscious of the Sabra massacre when you were a young man? If so how did it affect you?
Yes, I was living in the city when it happened and I saw the aftermath. It was something that affected me greatly and that's why I wanted to write the book.
With events in the Middle East still topical and so volatile, why did you set the book in the conflicts of the 1980s?
Because even events from 30 years ago (or indeed 65 years ago) still have an echo today. Events such as Sabra form part of the psyche of people living there, and are part of a collective consciousness. For that reason these are events that people in the West should also be aware of if we ever want an end to the volatility you mention. My other reason for setting it then was that I thought it would make a good story. War is always good at bringing out what is real in people, whether good or bad, and is an accelerated way to get to know characters based on their actions. A better example of how this can work is in 'Half of a Yellow Sun' which I read recently. It was great because it was set against historical events that I knew nothing about, so edifying in that respect, but also because I cared about what happened to the characters, who were agreeably complex.
The characters in the book, particularly of Ivan and Eli, seem very well-formed and are very credible. Are they based on people you knew in the past.
A couple of the characters are inspired by real people. Some are composites in terms of borrowing a characteristic from here and a linguistic tic from there but others are completely made up.
With your multi-national background, do you find a sense of unreality when you return to Britain from the Middle East? It must seem very peaceful here when you have observed areas where community-conflict rules. Do you observe any parallels between modern British cities and those in the Middle East?
I haven't returned to the Middle East since leaving Beirut in 1982. When I arrived back here I did have difficulty adjusting, simply because I couldn't relate to people's preoccupations with what seemed like trivia. However, that was more to do with coming from a war zone than coming from the Middle East, where you will find that ordinary people's concerns are the same as everyone else's. Even in war, though, universal preoccupations emerge, as with Ivan, whose initial focus is on getting laid rather than anything else.
To answer your question on parallels between cities, I've just done an interview with Time Out - Time Out Beirut, that is, not Time Out London, which perhaps says more about what different cultures have in common than I can.
Moving on to your M.E. I am very familiar with this illness because close relatives and friends have it. You were formally diagnosed only four years ago. Did you suspect that you had M.E. before then?
No, ME was the last thing I thought I had. I knew next to nothing about it before diagnosis and it did not feature in the the gamut of illnesses I thought I had, which included the possibility that I may be going mad! For years I was told there was nothing wrong with me so I continued to push through it. Luckily I happened to change GPs and my new doctor immediately suspected ME, later confirmed by two specialists. I now know that carrying on and ignoring it was the wrong thing to do and made me worse. I believe if I had been diagnosed early on I may have had a better chance of recovery.
How has M.E. affected your writing? Do you write more or less because of it?
One of the effects of ME (and there are many) is the cognitive impairment it causes, the infamous 'brain fog', and this is a killer in terms of creativity, especially since on a bad day I struggle to find the right word for even the most dull of sentences. When I am 'well' I work in short bursts (that's how I'm tackling this interview) and try to do something whatever my condition, even if it is just reading for 10 minutes or mulling things over in a reclined position! I find I have to double- and triple-check things to make sure I haven't screwed up on some plot point. Sometimes, though, I just have to succumb to long periods of not writing.
Many people find that the illness has a bit of a stigma and prefer not to mention it. Are you happy to have your M.E. mentioned in your biography on your publicity sheet? Has being up-front about the condition resulted in any responses from people, positive or negative?
Nasim Jafry, author of 'The State of Me', writes that people with ME are like the Palestinians of the medical world - an apt analogy, given your earlier questions. One of the parallels is the need for a better understanding of the illness, which unfortunately has been conflated with other fatigue-causing conditions such as depression. The result is that very little biomedical research is being done, the focus being on the psychological aspect of the illness, although this is slowly beginning to change now.
Also, having ME is a part of who I am and is something I have come to terms with, albeit after a period of denial. I have had to give up work because of it, and it limits me in so many ways that it is difficult to hide, particularly with the publication of a book and what is usually expected of an author. For that reason I decided to 'come out' about having the illness. I don't plan to go around wearing a t-shirt proclaiming that I have ME, but I'm happy to explain about it when asked. Only time will tell whether I've made the right decision.
I value my independence as a book reviewer and rarely accept invitations to interview authors and to promote their books, but I am making an exception for Sabra Zoo by Mischa Hiller, published by the excellent Telegram Books. I rate this as a very fine book which deserves as much exposure as it can get, so I shall make some opening remarks about the book and then publish Mischa's answers to my questions.
I enjoyed reading Sabra Zoo for its fast-paced narrative and insights into an event that is fast-fading from public memory, the Sabra Refugee Camp massacre in 1982. This fictionalised account follows a year or two in the life of Ivan, an 18 year old man with Danish and Palestinian parentage, the fortunate possessor of a Danish passport which provides him with the ability to survive the many road-blocks and searches that are an inevitable part of life during the Lebanese Civil War.
The book opens with Beirut in a state of chaos: "It was July, the siege was settling nicely into a routine that people could understand: the water had been cut off, the electricity had died, the city had been pounded with big bombs, peppered with small, a ceasefire was announced and then it started all over again".
Ivan's parents have returned to Denmark and he lives in the apartment they vacated, while working as a free-lance translator in the hospitals where Western aid-workers deal with the injuries arising from the conflict. Ivan's apartment becomes a meeting place for aid-workers and young Lebanese and Ivan finds himself sharing food and beds with a variety of people, including the Norwegian doctor Eli.
Almost inevitably, Ivan develops a strong attachment to Eli, despite a significant age-gap, but Eli finds it hard to see him as a potential lover. Mischa Hiller captures well the longing of a young man for a more sophisticated and older woman as they work together in close contact in the hospital. The wards are full of despair, with children and young people coming to terms with horrific injuries in various ways.
Ivan accompanies Eli on her hospital rounds and meets Youseff, a young boy who has been badly injured by kicking a cluster bomb while playing football. Far from being grateful for the treatment he receives in the hospital, Youssef responds to attempted conversation with a range of creative obscenities. Despite the difficulties, Ivan finds himself befriending Youseff and encouraging him to walk again despite the immense pain this causes him. Later we read of the BBC coming to film a story about the children in the hospital but rejecting Youssef because he is "difficult" in favour of a more visually acceptable young girl with a prosthetic limb.
The city becomes increasingly chaotic and the aid workers and their co-workers mirror the chaos in their own lives with increasing amounts of alcohol, dossing-down in various surviving apartments where food and cigarettes are shared while the opportunities to do so continue.
In the second half of the novel events escalate, with Israeli jets breaking the sound barrier at low-level above the city as a prelude to the terrible events about to happen at Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Western government fail to act to prevent the ongoing terror as Lebanese Phalangist (Christian) forces, protected by the Israelis, work through the refugee camps killing whoever they find there. Ivan and his friends and colleagues try to get into the camp but are turned away, returning after the Phalangists have left to find a scenes of horror and devastation.
This book works on several levels. Firstly as a human story, with Ivan living as normal a life as he can while dealing with daily stress at a level few of us have to experience. Secondly as a dramatic picture of a city under seige, its people struggling to continue with their lives despite their forced return to primitive living conditions. Thirdly as a reminder of the terrible injustices wreaked upon Palestinians and in particular the terrible events which took place in the refugee camps in 1982.
Sabra Zoo joins the ranks of an increasing number of novels set in the Middle East. Western readers are discovering a world very different from their own, but one which provides (as in Sabra Zoo) some compelling human stories set in a fast-moving world where guns and bombs form the backdrop to daily life. I am very pleased that Mischa Hiller has prepared a prize-winning screenplay for Sabra Zoo and hope that a film studio soon recognises its dramatic potential.
And now for the interview with author Mischa Hiller:
Were you very conscious of the Sabra massacre when you were a young man? If so how did it affect you?
Yes, I was living in the city when it happened and I saw the aftermath. It was something that affected me greatly and that's why I wanted to write the book.
With events in the Middle East still topical and so volatile, why did you set the book in the conflicts of the 1980s?
Because even events from 30 years ago (or indeed 65 years ago) still have an echo today. Events such as Sabra form part of the psyche of people living there, and are part of a collective consciousness. For that reason these are events that people in the West should also be aware of if we ever want an end to the volatility you mention. My other reason for setting it then was that I thought it would make a good story. War is always good at bringing out what is real in people, whether good or bad, and is an accelerated way to get to know characters based on their actions. A better example of how this can work is in 'Half of a Yellow Sun' which I read recently. It was great because it was set against historical events that I knew nothing about, so edifying in that respect, but also because I cared about what happened to the characters, who were agreeably complex.
The characters in the book, particularly of Ivan and Eli, seem very well-formed and are very credible. Are they based on people you knew in the past.
A couple of the characters are inspired by real people. Some are composites in terms of borrowing a characteristic from here and a linguistic tic from there but others are completely made up.
With your multi-national background, do you find a sense of unreality when you return to Britain from the Middle East? It must seem very peaceful here when you have observed areas where community-conflict rules. Do you observe any parallels between modern British cities and those in the Middle East?
I haven't returned to the Middle East since leaving Beirut in 1982. When I arrived back here I did have difficulty adjusting, simply because I couldn't relate to people's preoccupations with what seemed like trivia. However, that was more to do with coming from a war zone than coming from the Middle East, where you will find that ordinary people's concerns are the same as everyone else's. Even in war, though, universal preoccupations emerge, as with Ivan, whose initial focus is on getting laid rather than anything else.
To answer your question on parallels between cities, I've just done an interview with Time Out - Time Out Beirut, that is, not Time Out London, which perhaps says more about what different cultures have in common than I can.
Moving on to your M.E. I am very familiar with this illness because close relatives and friends have it. You were formally diagnosed only four years ago. Did you suspect that you had M.E. before then?
No, ME was the last thing I thought I had. I knew next to nothing about it before diagnosis and it did not feature in the the gamut of illnesses I thought I had, which included the possibility that I may be going mad! For years I was told there was nothing wrong with me so I continued to push through it. Luckily I happened to change GPs and my new doctor immediately suspected ME, later confirmed by two specialists. I now know that carrying on and ignoring it was the wrong thing to do and made me worse. I believe if I had been diagnosed early on I may have had a better chance of recovery.
How has M.E. affected your writing? Do you write more or less because of it?
One of the effects of ME (and there are many) is the cognitive impairment it causes, the infamous 'brain fog', and this is a killer in terms of creativity, especially since on a bad day I struggle to find the right word for even the most dull of sentences. When I am 'well' I work in short bursts (that's how I'm tackling this interview) and try to do something whatever my condition, even if it is just reading for 10 minutes or mulling things over in a reclined position! I find I have to double- and triple-check things to make sure I haven't screwed up on some plot point. Sometimes, though, I just have to succumb to long periods of not writing.
Many people find that the illness has a bit of a stigma and prefer not to mention it. Are you happy to have your M.E. mentioned in your biography on your publicity sheet? Has being up-front about the condition resulted in any responses from people, positive or negative?
Nasim Jafry, author of 'The State of Me', writes that people with ME are like the Palestinians of the medical world - an apt analogy, given your earlier questions. One of the parallels is the need for a better understanding of the illness, which unfortunately has been conflated with other fatigue-causing conditions such as depression. The result is that very little biomedical research is being done, the focus being on the psychological aspect of the illness, although this is slowly beginning to change now.
Also, having ME is a part of who I am and is something I have come to terms with, albeit after a period of denial. I have had to give up work because of it, and it limits me in so many ways that it is difficult to hide, particularly with the publication of a book and what is usually expected of an author. For that reason I decided to 'come out' about having the illness. I don't plan to go around wearing a t-shirt proclaiming that I have ME, but I'm happy to explain about it when asked. Only time will tell whether I've made the right decision.
Confessions of a Bookworm
With his parents evacuated after the Israeli siege of Beirut, 18-year-old Ivan is enjoying his first taste of freedom. With his Danish passport and foreign looks, he spends his days working and flirting in the camp hospital, traveling with journalists and doing package drops for the PLO. But when Israeli troops enter the city, chaos breaks out and Ivan is cut-off from friends and foes alike, forcing him to face what it means to be free in a city under siege.
When I received this book I wasn’t sure what to expect. What I found was a coming of age story set in one of the worst periods in Lebanese history from the point of view of a young man still coming to terms with who he is. For all he has seen, done and lived through, Ivan is a relative innocent until the moment the Israeli troops invade West Beirut. You feel for him as he tries to understand, how after everything that has happened at Sabra, life can possibly go on.
The book is was a quicker read that I would have expected but it can be a bit confusing if, like me, you’re not that familiar with the history and politics of the Middle East. But this book isn’t about taking sides. This is a human story set in a place we often write off because the conflict is a matter of everyday life; that the people there are immune to their situation. But war always changes people. This book gives us insight into the conflict within the individual to find the courage and strength to continue to live with circumstances of war.
With his parents evacuated after the Israeli siege of Beirut, 18-year-old Ivan is enjoying his first taste of freedom. With his Danish passport and foreign looks, he spends his days working and flirting in the camp hospital, traveling with journalists and doing package drops for the PLO. But when Israeli troops enter the city, chaos breaks out and Ivan is cut-off from friends and foes alike, forcing him to face what it means to be free in a city under siege.
When I received this book I wasn’t sure what to expect. What I found was a coming of age story set in one of the worst periods in Lebanese history from the point of view of a young man still coming to terms with who he is. For all he has seen, done and lived through, Ivan is a relative innocent until the moment the Israeli troops invade West Beirut. You feel for him as he tries to understand, how after everything that has happened at Sabra, life can possibly go on.
The book is was a quicker read that I would have expected but it can be a bit confusing if, like me, you’re not that familiar with the history and politics of the Middle East. But this book isn’t about taking sides. This is a human story set in a place we often write off because the conflict is a matter of everyday life; that the people there are immune to their situation. But war always changes people. This book gives us insight into the conflict within the individual to find the courage and strength to continue to live with circumstances of war.
IT'S A CRIME! (OR A MYSTERY...)
It is the summer of 1982 and Beirut is under siege…’
This is the world that Ivan inhabits. A mere eighteen years old, his parents were recently evacuated from the city with other cadres of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). Ivan remains behind, for reasons we do not know, but he has a role as an interpreter for the various international medical volunteers within the Sabra refugee camp. When not performing that duty, Ivan works undercover for the PLO, delivering false ID documents.
At eighteen, Ivan is embarking on the adult world. And for a novel with a potentially depressing and dark storyline, Ivan’s age proves uplifting and the source of unexpected humour. With hormones raging and a virginity he looks forward to shedding, he knows where he wants to look but still has the nuances of the social subtleties to learn. The older Eli, a Norwegian physiotherapist is the subject of his immediate focus. He is drawn to her both emotionally and mentally, as well as working alongside her at the hospital.
At the hospital they both face a challenge in the form of Youssef, an orphan severely wounded by a cluster bomb. He is belligerent and not interested in making the effort required to work on his recovery. His progress forms a good part of the story told, how Eli, and Ivan in particular, work with him and unveil the cheeky boy that lies beneath the surface, restoring his sense of life and redirecting his determination.
By day the medics work and Ivan interprets, always aware of his limits, always aware of the nature of grief. By night, they socialise: eating together; drinking alcohol; getting stoned; huddling together for human warmth and kindness. That difficult but routine way of life tests their limits and loyalties when the president-elect is assassinated and the Israeli army enters Beirut. At this stage, Hiller describes the horrific realities of a war-torn environment as the army invades and executes inhumane and thoughtless damage.
Sabra Zoo is a novel written in a style that demands a slow and attentive read. Each sentence seems to be an action that leads to the next and nothing can be quickly surveyed on the page. It’s an emotionally engaging novel that offers a great insight into the reality of this appalling world.
Hailed as a “debut thriller for fans of Waltz with Bashir and De Niro’s Game” on the cover of the proof copy, I beg to differ with the description of “thriller”. But what I feel it is not, is actually much, much more: a very worthy tribute and insight into how people live in such dreadful circumstances of war. What most of us spend our lives blissfully shielded from, others have to face on a daily basis, and it is all described here with emotion but not sentimentality.
I suspect Sabra Zoo will turn out to be one of those initially quiet gems of 2010 with word of mouth leading to a major audience. Hiller paints a picture that you really need to read. Don’t miss it: Sabra Zoo really is a gem of education and engaging storytelling. You will find yourself living under Ivan’s own skin.
It is the summer of 1982 and Beirut is under siege…’
This is the world that Ivan inhabits. A mere eighteen years old, his parents were recently evacuated from the city with other cadres of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). Ivan remains behind, for reasons we do not know, but he has a role as an interpreter for the various international medical volunteers within the Sabra refugee camp. When not performing that duty, Ivan works undercover for the PLO, delivering false ID documents.
At eighteen, Ivan is embarking on the adult world. And for a novel with a potentially depressing and dark storyline, Ivan’s age proves uplifting and the source of unexpected humour. With hormones raging and a virginity he looks forward to shedding, he knows where he wants to look but still has the nuances of the social subtleties to learn. The older Eli, a Norwegian physiotherapist is the subject of his immediate focus. He is drawn to her both emotionally and mentally, as well as working alongside her at the hospital.
At the hospital they both face a challenge in the form of Youssef, an orphan severely wounded by a cluster bomb. He is belligerent and not interested in making the effort required to work on his recovery. His progress forms a good part of the story told, how Eli, and Ivan in particular, work with him and unveil the cheeky boy that lies beneath the surface, restoring his sense of life and redirecting his determination.
By day the medics work and Ivan interprets, always aware of his limits, always aware of the nature of grief. By night, they socialise: eating together; drinking alcohol; getting stoned; huddling together for human warmth and kindness. That difficult but routine way of life tests their limits and loyalties when the president-elect is assassinated and the Israeli army enters Beirut. At this stage, Hiller describes the horrific realities of a war-torn environment as the army invades and executes inhumane and thoughtless damage.
Sabra Zoo is a novel written in a style that demands a slow and attentive read. Each sentence seems to be an action that leads to the next and nothing can be quickly surveyed on the page. It’s an emotionally engaging novel that offers a great insight into the reality of this appalling world.
Hailed as a “debut thriller for fans of Waltz with Bashir and De Niro’s Game” on the cover of the proof copy, I beg to differ with the description of “thriller”. But what I feel it is not, is actually much, much more: a very worthy tribute and insight into how people live in such dreadful circumstances of war. What most of us spend our lives blissfully shielded from, others have to face on a daily basis, and it is all described here with emotion but not sentimentality.
I suspect Sabra Zoo will turn out to be one of those initially quiet gems of 2010 with word of mouth leading to a major audience. Hiller paints a picture that you really need to read. Don’t miss it: Sabra Zoo really is a gem of education and engaging storytelling. You will find yourself living under Ivan’s own skin.