Beirut, 1980s. The city is burning and the boys are growing up inside it.

The novel follows two friends, Bassam and George, navigating the violence and black-market economies of civil war Lebanon. One dreams of escape; the other gravitates toward power. Their friendship frays as militias recruit and loyalties calcify. 

The novel is lean, unsentimental, and alert to the seductions of violence. It refuses to romanticise war, but it also refuses to flatten its characters into victims. Hage writes with heat and clarity about masculinity under siege — how swagger, cinema, and myth bleed into real blood.

The title nods to The Deer Hunter — what game are you playing when the stakes are already fatal?

Winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Shortlisted for the Giller Prize. It still hits hard.