My name is Frank M. Zisku. I write thrillers and noir set in my homeland, Sardinia.
I was born in Germany to Sardinian parents, both from Dorgali, who had emigrated for work. I grew up and went to school there until I was eleven. In 1985 I moved to Dorgali, where I spent a year living with my grandparents before my parents returned too.
This is where I built my life. I have friends in many towns and villages, and a deep bond with Barbagia: its people, its customs and its contradictions. I am Sardinian, and proud of it. I believe in Sardinian independence and in our people’s right to self-determination, the freedom to decide our own future. That conviction has always been part of me.
I have travelled across my homeland on foot and by motorcycle, and explored beneath it during the years I spent caving. I used to race enduro, and I love motorcycle touring: I have ridden through much of Europe, alone and with friends. I love Sardinia’s mountains, its sea and its mysteries. Yet it is to the Supramonte that I return in search of something I feel belongs to me deep down.
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I know the nights spent outdoors, the trails, the journey from sea to mountain. I like to stop at archaeological sites, taking time to sit in silence and meditate. In certain places I feel a particular energy. I carry that feeling into my stories.
I enjoy going to the festivals in our towns and villages. Each has its own customs, traditional dress, beliefs and way of coming together. I especially love the carnival season, Barbagia’s ancestral masks and the atmosphere around the bonfires of Saint Anthony. These are days of gathering, of open wine cellars and new wine: moments when I feel my bond with this land and its people all the more strongly.
I read a great deal, usually between eighty and a hundred books a year. I have always written down thoughts and poems. Over time, my love of thrillers and noir led me to look for a longer story to tell.
Losing my father when I was twenty left a deep mark on my life. My mother, Lina, has always been there for me. She has made many sacrifices and helped me enormously. I am deeply grateful to her.
My brother Giovanni is seven years younger than me and has lived away from Sardinia for many years. We share that feeling of homecoming: when he arrives, he too needs to take a deep breath of the air of home. I like to think our father passed this on to us, and that it is something that still binds us together.
Over the years I have also faced difficult periods of ill health, during which writing became an ever greater part of my life. In July 2025 I began the work that, over thirteen months, grew into a story later divided into two novels: The Shadow of Supramonte and The Shadow of Blood.
What draws me most when I write is getting inside my characters’ minds and exploring the relationships between people. The mystery also grows out of the places I know and the impressions that stay with me as I walk through them.
My books hold the Sardinia I live in every day: proud, complex, full of beauty and hardship. I want to tell the stories of its people, its traditions and its contradictions, along with the sense of mystery that certain places never cease to stir in me.
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