Beirut, LEBANON

Beirut, once described as the 'Paris of the Middle East', has had a turbulent but fascinating past. Its history goes back almost 5,000 years. Like Lebanon itself, it has survived one conqueror after another – everyone from the Phoenicians to the French have occupied this small jewel of a nation on the edge of the Mediterranean. It is also the childhood home of the charismatic Marc Abadi, one of the central male characters in Bitter Chocolate...

Extract from Bitter Chocolate:

     Something woke him up. He lay in the dark for a second, his heart thumping as he struggled to recognise what he already knew. There was a second's lull, the sudden, eerie quiet and then the dull, aching 'whump' as the sky fragmented in hailstorm of explosions. He was out of his bed before the wailing and screaming began a few seconds later. He slept in his clothes, now. Plucking a jacket from the back of a chair, he ran out of the room and was downstairs and on to the street in seconds. His beeper started to buzz furiously; it would be Doménico or Lara, the two medics who lived closer to the camps. He sprinted up the street towards the main road, scanning the horizon for signs of a taxi and was lucky. 'Sabra,' he instructed the driver. 'Hurry!'
     The driver turned to look at him in surprise. 'Sabra? Are you crazy? Don’t you know what's happening there?'
     'I’m a doctor,' Marc said curtly. The driver nodded slowly, a sad, almost wistful comprehension breaking out over his face. They drove in silence through the empty streets as a violent dawn came up over the city.