Eshkol Nevo was born in Jerusalem in 1971. He grew up in his birthplace as well as in Haifa and Detroit. His grandfather was Israel’s third Minister President, Levi Eshkol. Nevo studied psychology at the University of Tel Aviv, but also completed studies as a copywriter at theTirza Granot School. Following that, he worked eight years in the advertising industry before beginning to write short stories.
The plot in his debut novel »Arba’a batim ve ga’agua« (2004; Engl. »Osmosis«, 2006) begins immediately after the murder of Minister President Yitzhak Rabin. By focussing on several neighbours on a Jerusalem suburb, Nevo reflects the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the level of the individual. The characters, whom he lets speak for themselves, include a father whose son died in Lebanon who is living in a house in which a Palestinian builder returning home expects to find his family. Other characters are a student couple and a Romanian migrant worker. The authenticity of his figures comes from original recordings that Nevo collected over a period of two years. Nevo’s second novel »Mashala echat yamina« (2007; Engl. »World Cup Wishes«, 2010), which is set in a fictitious editorial office, compares the lifestyles of four friends during the 1998 football World Cup with the reality of each of their existences during the next World Cup. Between everyday life, politics and love affairs, he asks how much control we really have over our lives. His new work »Neuland« (2011; UK release 2014), the title of which refers to Theodor Herzl, looks at the possibilities for self-determination. Nevo researched for several months in Berlin, where significant parts of the novel take place.
Chance brings together two travellers in Peru. One of them is searching for his disappeared father, while the other longs for truthfulness and freedom. In this novel about love and loss, responsibility and failure, seeking and being found, which spans generations and continents, Nevo creates a utopia of new beginning and a search for identity located outside of Israel. The author carried out several months of research in Berlin, where central parts of his novel take place.
Nevo has received, among other awards, the Golden Book Prize in 2005 and the Raymond Wallier Prize of the Salon du Livre, Paris in 2008. What is more, in 2008, he was accepted to the Israel Cultural Excellence Foundation (IcExcellence) one of the highest accolades for artists in his home country. He teaches creative writing at several Israeli universities, among these the renowned Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Sapir College and the Open University of Israel.