During the '60s and '70s, our family lived in Israel and every Arab country in the region. It was fun revisiting some of these iconic locations - Gaza, the Old & New City in Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, Government House - as settings for scenes in the book, albeit two decades later

An in-law of mine has schizophrenia. As I learnt about this illness, I realised how most people have little understanding of it. I decided to weave it into the storyline to bring to life the devasting effect it can have on a family. Unexpectedly, this storyline morphed into exploring what it would be like having a horrific, scary mental illness, one involving hallucinations and imaginary voices, in a warzone hospital like the AUB that is already overwhelmed dealing with physical injuries. That scene is one of my favourites.

I went back to Lebanon in April 2015 to do some on the ground research for the locations in the first part of the novel. You can read about his trip here ... 

A watermelon cut into the shape of their former homeland, and with its colours mirroring the Palestinian flag, has become a symbol of Palestinian resistance. More details at

https://hyperallergic.com/666111/how-watermelon-became-a-symbol-of-palestinian-resistance/

I thought the image made a good front cover., symbolising the fragmented lands, and the torn apart populations, that form the backdrop for the novel.

I'm  a bit of a music lyrics nerd, so you'll find lots of music references throughout the text. Each major section is named after a song whose lyrics have particular relevance to events in that section. My personal favourite is the Doors lyric that ends "no-one here gets out alive' - can you locate the first part of that lyric in the text?

The Assisted Dying movement is one I fully support and a topic I wanted to explore in a fiction-context. In particular, by dramatising the practicalities in a shocking way I'm hoping to get more people thinking about how this might one day impact their life.