The Win­ter issue of Jew­ish Book World is in the mail! To cel­e­brate, we thought we’d share a sneak peek of the issue with an excerpt from Jew­ish Book World​‘s inter­view with Dan­it Brown, author of Ask for a Con­vert­ible:

One of the major themes of your sto­ry col­lec­tion is Israel. Tell me a bit about your per­son­al rela­tion­ship with Israel.
My back­ground is pret­ty sim­i­lar to Osnat’s (the main char­ac­ter in the book) in that I was born in Israel and moved here when I was ten. We’ve always had a close con­nec­tion to Israel. I was in school in Israel from first to fourth grades and I was taught that Israel was a place to go back to. I went back as a Return­ing Minor in my 20’s but I was nev­er able to make the adjustment.


You have sev­er­al oth­er themes that flow through­out your nar­ra­tive, includ­ing fam­i­ly and a sense of belong­ing. One of the minor yet con­sis­tent themes is that of run­ning. How much of a metaphor is that for any under­ly­ing motifs of run­ning toward some­thing or run­ning away? Or do you just like to run?
I do love to run. I’m not good at it at all. But if it’s func­tion­ing as a metaphor, it’s not some­thing I was actu­al­ly aware of.


We under­stand, of course, that your pro­tag­o­nist, Osnat, is a fic­tion­al char­ac­ter. You’ve already told us she shares much of your back­ground. How much does she reflect your feelings?
I would have to say that while some bio­graph­i­cal ele­ments are sim­i­lar, I would have to give a typ­i­cal writer’s answer that all of the char­ac­ters reflect my feel­ings in some way through their posi­tions. All the char­ac­ters are caught between con­flict­ing feel­ings or sit­u­a­tions or cultures.


Have any of those con­flicts been resolved?
For some of the char­ac­ters, they have. Har­ri­et and Noam have found a way to resolve their con­tra­dic­tions and Osnat is well on her way.

To read the com­plete inter­view, be sure to check out the Win­ter issue of Jew­ish Book World