With a longstanding career as an award-winning writer, Dennis Bock has released his fourth novel, The Good German, which offers a port city setting influenced by his upbringing in Oakville, Ontario.
Released in September of this year, The Good German examines what would have happened if the German anti-fascist Georg Elser had been successful in his 1939 assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler. In the book, Hitler’s death marks the beginning of an alternate version of history as we know it, taking readers through the unexpected consequences that follow.
Bock, who was once a paperboy for the Oakville Journal Record, says his writing stems from an interest in how catastrophic events of history can shape ordinary people. Looking introspectively at his own life, Bock has thought about how the Second World War shaped his parents, who immigrated to Canada from Germany in the mid-1950s.
“My inclination is to look at the individual life as opposed to trying to understand the whole world. I try to develop my characters as unique individuals in this much bigger story,” says Bock, 56.
The Good German even draws upon some personal experiences Bock had growing up, including his first brush with prejudice in the elementary schoolyard. He recalls being identified as “the German kid” and was assumed to have been involved in the Holocaust.
“I was singled out and looked upon differently, representing a certain heritage or bloodline. It was well before I understood what any of that meant,” Bock says. “I bore some generational guilt. That was kind of like an awakening of my conscience and my ability to see the other side of the story.”
Seeing the other side of the story has allowed Bock to write several award-winning novels and short stories in his 20-year career. His collection of stories Olympia, in which Oakville is a main setting, won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award for The Writers’ Union of Canada and the UK’s Betty Trask Award for best book by an author under 35.
The Ash Garden, Bock’s first novel that examines characters involved in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, won the 2002 Canada-Japan Literary Award and was shortlisted for several other awards and prizes. Bock’s third novel Going Home Again was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2013.
Bock has published short stories in a variety of literary journals, while his book reviews and travel writing have appeared in The Globe and Mail, The National Post, and The Washington Post, among others.
Although COVID-19 interrupted plans of promoting his new book in face-to-face celebrations and interviews, Bock has already received critical praise. Most notably, best-selling Canadian author Margaret Atwood lauds The Good German as, “A cunning, twisted, compelling tale of deeply unexpected consequences.”
The Good German partly takes place in Toronto near the lake, a setting Bock knows well as an Oakville native. He says growing up close to the water helped him develop the lakeside setting that aims to hype the drama of the plot.
“The lake really shaped my imagination. There was something about going to the shoreline and not being able to go any farther,” Bock says. “The physical place stops, and the imagination begins. The horizon is a rich metaphor to play with.”
Bock attended Oakville Trafalgar High School, where he said two of his former English teachers, Mr. Ritts and Mr. Skilleter, introduced him to the world of literature. At the time, an adolescent Bock was more interested in music than books.
“Reading wasn’t a big part of my upbringing, but after I discovered reading literary novels, I realized it would be way better to be Ernest Hemingway than to be George Harrison,” Bock says. “I tried to write poems and short stories, and I stuck with it.”
With a growing interest in writing, Bock went on to study at Western University, where he took a year off to live in Spain. According to Bock, living abroad to write for a year was a personal test to prove whether he had the mental stamina to be a full-time writer. It turned out he did. He returned to Western to finish his degree before moving to Madrid for four years, where he wrote and worked part-time as an ESL teacher.
Now, Bock lives in Toronto. When he’s not working on a new novel, he teaches writing classes at the Humber College's School of Writing and the University of Toronto. He also freelances in manuscript editing.
“I write from the inside out. The events serve to shape the characters in a way they can try to understand,” Bock says. “I’ve always been interested in the little person who has been shaped by big events.”