D.A. Mishani

Countdown with ...

D.A. Mishani

Dror Mishani was born in 1975 in Holon, a suburb of Tel Aviv, and spent the first 20 years of his life planning to escape it. When he finally did, he lived and studied in Jerusalem (Law and literature) and then in Paris (French and how to be alive), where he also discovered and fell in love with crime fiction.

He used to be a literary critic, editor, translator, and almost wrote a PhD on the history of detective fiction, while all this time dreaming of writing his own detective. In 2011, in a village near Cambridge in the UK called Impington, he finally looked this dream in the eye – and wrote The Missing File, the first in a series featuring police inspector Avraham Avraham, who lives and works in Holon, the same suburb Dror was trying to escape, which proves that setting yourself free is harder than it seems.

Since then Dror has written two more novels in the series and a standalone novel, Three, and is teaching Literature in Tel Aviv University. He lives in Tel Aviv with his wife Marta and two children, Benjamin and Sarah.

Interviewed 19 September 2020

Ten words to sum up your working life to date ...

"My unhappiness is due to being deprived of it" (Kafka)

Nine things you can see from where you're sitting ...

The neighbors' bedroom, a poster of an old film called Maigret Voit Rouge with Jean Gabin, a carpet, a figure in the carpet, the most important part of my library (the one with crime fiction), an old couch I really have to throw away, a black and white photo of my dad and I when I was three years old, What Happens in Hamlet by John Dover Wilson, a generous slice of very clear blue Mediterranean sky.

Eight minutes to prepare a meal. What's it going to be ?

I can make it in less than eight! A freshly sliced salad from a handful of cherry tomatoes and one onion, with a dressing of olive oil, lemon and salt, and on top of it a generous portion of tahini.

Seven people you'd like to go for a drink with ...

Billy Wilder
Edgar Allan Poe
Patricia Highsmith
Greta Gerwig
The Coen brothers
Elizabeth Olsen
Mick Jagger

Six things you can't live without ...

Tahini
Books
Music
Traveling
My motorbike
Marta

Five favourite words ...

Dimdumim (twilight in Hebrew)
Kolnoa (cinema in Hebrew)
Suspicious
Interpretation
Rosebud

Four places you'd run away to ...

The university library
My imagination
The beach (here in Tel Aviv)
Paris

Three books you've bought recently ...

Old Thiess, a Livonian Werewolf by Carlo Ginzburg and Bruce Lincoln
Dreaming of Babylon by Richard Brautigan
Snap by Belinda Bauer

Two things that make you rant ...

Traffic
Injustice

One thing you'd tell your teenage self ...

Not all of your dreams will come true, but still, life will be so much better.