A new collection from one of Ghana's most distinguished writers, the author of two other works of fiction, Our Sister Killjoy and No Sweetness Here, as well as plays, poems, and children's books.

In 1975, I was seven years old, and loved the Bazooka bubble-gums my mother would buy for Walid and me in Spinney's supermarket…

Beirut in the 1970s is a paradise. Wealthy families ride escalators and fill shopping carts with imported food and luxury products from Paris and New York. Lamia Ziade, seven years old, dreams of banana splits, American candy, flying on Pan Am Airways and visiting the local cinema. Considered by the elite the 'Paris, Las Vegas or Monaco of the Middle East', Beirut was in reality a powder-keg, waiting for a spark. On 13 April 1975, Lamia and her family returned from lunch in the countryside to find a city in flames. Looking back on the golden days before the war, and its immediate, devastating effects, Bye Bye Babylon positions an elegiac and shocking narrative next to a child's perspective of the years 1975-79: of consumer icons next to burning buildings, scenes of violence and sparkling new weapons painted in vivid technicolour—war as pop. It is both a lament for a home transformed by a destructive madness, and an inventory of the concrete objects of her childhood: the objects, details and fragments of memory which combine to capture the impossible reality of war. Part artist's sketchbook, part travel notebook and part family album, Bye Bye Babylon is a unique graphic memoir.

Born in Lebanon, Lamia Ziade is an internationally acclaimed artist and illustrator. She has worked as a fabric designer for Jean-Paul Gaultier and Issey Miyake, participated in a number of exhibitions and has published several books for adults and children.

Khadeejah Bibi Ballim is a hard-working and stubborn first-generation Indian who longs for her beloved homeland and often questions what she is doing on the tip of Africa. At thirty-seven, her daughter Summaya is struggling to reconcile her South African and Indian identities, while Summaya's own daughter, eleven-year-old Aneesa, is a girl who has some difficult questions of her own. Is her mother lying to her about her father's death? Why won't she tell her what really happened? Gradually, the past merges with the present as the novel meanders through their lives, uncovering the secrets people keep, the words they swallow and the emotions they elect to mute. For this family, faintly detectable through the sharp spicy aromas that find their way out of Khadeejah's kitchen, the scent of tragedy is always threatening. Eventually it will bring this family together. If not, it will tear them apart.

Gaza is being bombed. Rashid—a bright, unemployed twenty-seven-year-old, who has stayed up smoking grass watching it happen— wakes the next day to hear that he's got the escape route he's been waiting for: a scholarship to London. His twin sister, Iman—frustrated by atrocities and inaction around her—has also been up all night in a meeting that offers her nothing but more disappointment. Grabbing recklessly at an opportunity to make a difference, she finds herself being followed by an unknown fighter. Meanwhile Sabri, the oldest brother of this disparate Palestinian family works on a history of Palestine from his wheelchair as their mother pickles vegetables and feuds with their neighbours.

Written with extraordinary humanity and humour, and moving between Gaza, London and the Gulf, Out of It is a tale that redefines Palestine and its people. It follows the lives of Rashid and Iman as they try to forge places for themselves in the midst of occupation, religious fundamentalism and the divisions between Palestinian factions. It tells of family secrets, unlikely love stories and unburied tragedies as it captures the frustrations and energies of the modern Arab World

Selma Dabbagh is a British Palestinian writer based in London. Her short stories have been included in a number of anthologies including those published by Granta and the British Council. She was English PEN's nominee for International PEN's David TK Wong Award.