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Emiko Amai is six years old in August 1945 when the Hiroshima bomb burns away half of her face. To Anton, a young German physicist involved in the Manhattan Project, that same bomb represents the pinnacle of scientific elegance. And for his Austrian wife Sophie, a Jewish refugee, it marks the start of an irreparable fissure in their new marriage.
Fifty years later, seemingly far removed from the day that defined their lives, Emiko visits Anton and Sophie, and in Dennis Bock's powerfully imagined narrative, their histories converge.
About the author
Dennis Bock’s story collection,
Olympia, was awarded prizes in Canada and England. He lives in Toronto.
Summary
Emiko Amai is six years old in August 1945 when the Hiroshima bomb burns away half of her face. To Anton, a young German physicist involved in the Manhattan Project, that same bomb represents the pinnacle of scientific elegance. And for his Austrian wife Sophie, a Jewish refugee, it marks the start of an irreparable fissure in their new marriage.
Fifty years later, seemingly far removed from the day that defined their lives, Emiko visits Anton and Sophie, and in Dennis Bock’s powerfully imagined narrative, their histories converge.
Additional text
“A crystalline meditation on the defining event of the twentieth century and its aftermath . . . Inventive and consistently challenging” –Mark Rozzo, Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Mysterious and compelling. . . . An elegant, unnerving novel that illuminates the personal consequences of war.” –Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
“Exquisite. . . . Bock’s achievement here is in creating characters with believably ambiguous edges, vulnerable people whose understanding of themselves and others is incomplete.” -Janice P. Nimura, The Washington Post Book World
“Bock has shined an illuminating searchlight on the terra incognita where the personal and the political intersect.” –Dan Cryer, Newsday
“A splendid, powerful book, written with authority and admirable control.” –St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Assured and compassionate.” –Pico Iyer, Harper’s
“[T]his brilliant novel traces the lingering effects of the Hiroshima bombing . . . showing how war binds victor and victim as surely as scar tissue closes a wound.” –Rick Waddington, Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“Reconciliation, responsibility, blame and regret shift and fall in different patterns throughout this moving and thoughtful novel.” –Barbara Fisher, The Boston Globe
“Dennis Bock began The Ash Garden long before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, but it’s impossible now not to read his haunting debut novel outside the glare of that tragedy. . . . Bock sets a match to ethical issues that are reaching the flash point today.” –Ron Charles, The Christian Science Monitor
“One can go further with this book, and say that Bock has learned just about everything that can be gained from Michael Ondaatje and Jane Urquhart in the use of compelling images. . . . Very, very accomplished.” –T. F. Rigelhof, The Globe & Mail
“This is a gorgeous, poetic novel, with scenes that stun the senses. . . . Bock makes us see and live these lives in all their uneasy compromise.” –Susan Larson, New Orleans Times-Picayune
“For all its worldliness, The Ash Garden feels intimate and interior. . . . [Bock’s] are the battlefields of conscience, the war away from the war.” –Annabel Lyon, National Post
