Background

Daniel Silva was born in 1960 in Detroit, Michigan. When he was seven years old, his family moved to California.

Education

Daniel Silva received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Fresno State and began a graduate program in international relations at San Francisco State University.

Career

After receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree from Fresno State and starting a graduate program in international relations at San Francisco State University, Daniel Silva left when was offered employment as a journalist at UPI. Silva began his writing career as a journalist with a temporary position at United Press International in 1984. His assignment was to cover the Democratic National Convention.

United Press International made Silva's position permanent and, a year later, transferred him to the Washington, D.C., headquarters. After two more years, he was appointed as UPI's Middle East correspondent and moved to Cairo, Egypt. Silva returned to Washington, D.C., for a position with Cable News Network's Washington Bureau.

He worked as a producer and executive producer for several of CNN's television programs, including Crossfire and Capital Gang. Novelist In 1994 he began work on his first novel, The Unlikely Spy (1996). The novel debuted on the New York Times best-seller list on January 26, 1997.

It remained on the list for five weeks, rising to number 13. In 1997 Silva left CNN to pursue writing full-time. Since then Silva has written 17 more spy novels, all best-sellers on the New York Times list.

The main focus is Gabriel Allon, an Israeli art restorer, spy and assassin, who is a key figure in all but three of Silva's titles. The series has been a New York Times bestseller since its first installment in 2001. Seven of the series' titles hit number one on the New York Times list of best sellers.

Silva did not come into the Allon series with a significant understanding of the world of art restoration but was able to use a neighbor's expertise to help him turn a spy-assassin into an artist. In 2007, Universal Pictures made an offer to option the rights to Silva's Gabriel Allon series and it was believed they would begin with 2005's, The Messenger.

In 2011, it was announced that Jeff Zucker would be the producer. The deal was never signed. Silva has said that, unless he finds the right creative team, he thinks Gabriel Allon should remain solely in print.

Achievements

• Daniel Silva`s chief achievement is in the great accomplishment of being called his generation’s finest writer of international intrigue and one of the greatest American spy novelists ever. His books are published in more than 30 countries and are bestsellers around the world. Silva burst onto the scene in 1997 with his electrifying bestselling debut, The Unlikely Spy, a novel of love and deception set around the Allied invasion of France in World War II. His second and third novels, The Mark of the Assassin and The Marching Season, were also instant New York Times bestsellers and starred two of Silva’s most memorable characters: CIA officer Michael Osbourne and international hit man Jean-Paul Delaroche.
  
  His novel The Messenger won the Barry Award in 2006 for Best Thriller. He received 2007 Barry Award for Best Thriller for The Messenger, 2013 Barry Award for Best Thriller for The Fallen Angel. His 2008 novel Moscow Rules featuring art restorer and assassin Gabriel Allon was a No. 1 New York Times best-seller, as was 2009's, "The Defector."
  
  Another Silva`s accomplishment came on January 2009, when he was appointed to a five-year term on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's United States Holocaust Memorial Council.
  
  
  
  

Works

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  • Portrait of a Spy

    (Portrait of a Spy is Silva’s eleventh thriller to feature...)

    2011
  • The Heist

    (Master novelist Daniel Silva has thrilled readers with si...)

    2014
  • The Secret Servant

    (In the aftermath of an Amsterdam-based terrorism analyst'...)

    2007
  • The Black Widow

    (Gabriel Allon, the art restorer, spy, and assassin descri...)

    2016
  • Prince of Fire

    ((Gabriel Allon Series Book 5) After an explosion in Rome ...)

    2008
  • The New Girl

    (At an exclusive private school in Switzerland, mystery su...)

    2019
  • The Marching Season

    ((Michael Osbourne Book 2) The #1 New York Times bestselli...)

    2004
  • Prince of Fire

    (Recalled to service in Israel after terrorists steal secr...)

    2005
  • A Death in Vienna

    (Art restorer and sometime spy Gabriel Allon is sent to Vi...)

    2005
  • Moscow Rules

    (The death of a journalist leads Israeli spy Gabriel Allon...)

    2008
  • The Secret Servant

    (A terrorist plot in London leads Israeli spy Gabriel Allo...)

    2008
  • The Rembrandt Affair

    (Having retreated to the windswept cliffs of Cornwall with...)

    2011
  • The Fallen Angel

    (Art restorer, assassin, spy - Gabriel Allon returns in Th...)

    2013
  • The English Spy

    (When a bomb explodes aboard her holiday yacht, British in...)

    2018
  • The Kill Artist

    (Immersed in the quiet, meticulous life of an art restorer...)

    2004
  • The Mark of the Assassin

    (CIA Agent Michael Osbourne stars in this suspenseful seri...)

    2003
  • The English Girl: A Novel

    ((Gabriel Allon Series Book 13) Daniel Silva delivers anot...)

    2013
  • The English Assassin

    (Spy turned art restorer Gabriel Allon finds himself accus...)

    2003
  • House of Spies: A Novel

    (A heart-stopping tale of suspense, Daniel Silva’s runaway...)

    2014
  • The Unlikely Spy

    (“In wartime,” Winston Churchill wrote, “truth is so preci...)

    2003
  • The Other Woman

    (In an isolated village in the mountains of Andalusia, a m...)

    2019
  • The Defector

    (In Moscow Rules Gabriel Allon went up against the sadisit...)

    2010
  • The Messenger

    (Gabriel Allon is about to face the greatest challenge of ...)

    2008
  • The Confessor

    (In Munich, a Jewish scholar is assassinated. In Venice, M...)

    2004

Religion

Daniel Silva was raised as a Catholic but then changed his religious affiliation to Judaism. As Daniel stated himself in the interview to a Hadassah Magazine journalist Barbara Pash on August/September of 2014: "Judaism is a big part of my life. I belong to a Reform congregation. But I would say there’s very little Judaism in the books actually. You will see celebrations of Shabbat but the characters, like many Israelis and I would hazard to guess, most of the people who work in Israeli intelligence, are very secular."

Views

Most of Silva`s novels are set against Islamic terrorism, some relate to villains set in Russia, and some are about historic events related to World War II and the Holocaust.

Quotations: "In the near future the Arab world will be more populist and more Islamist at the same time. Eventually, I can’t imagine that the focus of this enormous energy that’s sweeping the region is not going to find itself in Israel.” Silva also observed, “as the entire region becomes more Islamic, it’s only natural that the conflict is going to become more overtly religious than it already is. If that is the case, then Jerusalem, this symbol of the navel of the world, this place that all the three Abrahamic faiths hold sacred, is going to be a flashpoint for the future.”

“I remind my family when they accuse me of being absent-minded or not paying attention that I spend more time in his world than I do in the real one,” says Silva, who’s married to journalist Jamie Gangel; they have two children. “I don’t mean to sound like a crazy person! I set scenes in places where friends of mine live. I borrow traits from people I know. When I talk about them with my wife, when I’m working through something, I refer to them as though they’re friends. I talk about their lives as though they’re real.”

Connections

Daniel Silva and Jamie Gangel (American television news reporter) have been married for 32 years. They have 2 children, Lily and Nicholas.

Wife:

Jamie Gangel

Daughter:

Lily Silva

Son:

Nicholas Silva

References

• An Unauthorized Guide to Daniel Silva: A Short Biography of the Author of 'The Heist' and Other Thrillers This article profiles Daniel Silva. One of the world's best-selling spy novelists, Silva is best known for his Gabriel Allon novels. Find out how he became a writer, and how his career has developed.
  2015
• Daniel Silva`s Official Website