Koolaids: The Art of War is a novel by Rabih Alameddine, an author and painter who lives in both San Francisco and Beirut. He grew up in the Middle East, in Kuwait and Lebanon. Published in 1998, Koolaids is Alameddine's first novel. The majority of the story takes place in San Francisco and Beirut, the sites of two very different "wars". San Francisco from the mid-1980s into the 1990s is the main site of the AIDS epidemic, especially among the gay community, while Beirut is the site of a brutal civil war.