It's always somebody else's war. Until you're in it.
Beirut, April 1975. A British couple newly arrived in the city. An American journalist who knows everybody and fears nothing. His Palestinian girlfriend, beguiling—and with her own secrets.
When clashes between rival militias break out across the city, the four of them watch from what feels like a safe distance—expatriates, observers, spectators of somebody else's conflict. But as the fighting intensifies, so do their desires. Someone feels betrayed. And they discover that in civil war, there are no civilians.
'The Foreign Aide' is a psychological thriller about a marriage and a country both victims of self-destruction—and about the catastrophic consequences of being drawn into a conflict you don't understand by people you shouldn't trust.
The novel is set in the real Beirut of 1975, drawn from first-hand experience: the author arrived in the city at the same moment as his characters, and stayed long after the war had begun. As one reader put it: "Lebanon feels like a character in the book."
First published in 2010, 'The Foreign Aide' has been revised, retitled and republished in 2026—just as Lebanon and the Middle East are plunged into war again. Readers who enjoy Graham Greene, John le Carré, or William Boyd may find this is exactly the novel the moment calls for.
