The Bocks arrived in Canada in 1955 with two youngsters. Three more were born in Canada, the youngest of whom is Dennis. He saw the light-of-day in Belleville, ON, but grew up in beautiful Oakville, within walking distance of Lake Ontario. That lake has a strong presence in both his books.

"It is so easy to take for granted," he said about growing up beside the smallest of the Great Lakes, which to Europeans seem more the size of oceans. "As a kid I went down there every day. It became my great backyard playpen. We swam in it, played on the ice, smoked cigarettes." But, when slightly reprimanded for being a smoker, he quickly interjected that he took only a few puffs at the age of 12. For a naturally curious youngster, the lake was a good place to be. "I used to love looking at all the dead things you find there, washed up on the beach."

Bock is unsure of just what made him become a writer. "I started writing in high school. I took to it naturally," he said. "I would sit down and imagine scenes that were not my own." Although he belittles his first writing efforts, he thinks he subconsciously chose his career to define himself against his four older siblings; perhaps it was also a rebellion against his father. The older Bock is a carpenter, and his youngest child admits that as a youngster he disliked that his father worked with his hands. Now, he points proudly to the woodwork around the fire place in his newly renovated home, one of his father's many contributions to the red brick house on a leafy street in Guelph. "When you are a silly teenager, you go through these things."

Leaning back in his chair and sipping tea he just poured from a cozy, big-bellied ceramic teapot, Bock stayed quiet for a moment, then continued: "Becoming a writer was most likely an act of rebellion. Instead of smoking (except for those attempts at age 12) I started writing bad poetry." The large age difference between him and his older siblings made him feel alone. So he sought to establish his own self.

He pointed out that he has found that a lot of dedicated readers ". . . read in spite of their parents." It is a way to define themselves within the family dynamics. In a way he feels this shows how little control we have over our fate. "Maybe just because you were alone as a kid, it brings out the silent artistic nature." He knows of no one among his ancestors who were inclined to writing. Yet, there is some artistic nature in the family. His mother is a fiber artist, while his father loves to perform, to play music in a German or Austrian club–he isn’t sure which-in the Burlington area.

His parents tried very hard to maintain their German heritage as their children grew up. "Typically, we rebelled. Since they were also very willing to become Canadians as soon as possible, they finally gave up on making us speak German at home." That came, of course, after they had given up on returning to Germany. In 1964, Bock said, his parents seemed fed up with Canada and suffered from homesickness. Just what made them change their minds he is not sure.

Olympia, his book of connected short stories,  touches on this rebellion by children of immigrants. It is a book that reveals to any immigrant family, among other ideas, that not just their children rebel against the old ways, but that it is a universal conundrum.

Bock studied philosophy and English at the University of Western Ontario, but he interrupted his studies in 1986 to spent a year in Salamanca, Spain. "I knew nothing about Spain other than that it involves Hemingway. I had a glamorous image of the expat experience. Of course, it is a fictional experience that I felt drawn to. I was looking for something more exciting than our own backyard."

After receiving his BA in 1989, he returned to Spain and began to write in earnest. Madrid became his home for five years, and produced the first half of Olympia. Why Spain? "I knew the opportunity would be good, a better spot to teach English there than in France. That is how I supported myself."

Madrid opened up a world to him that he had not anticipated. He now finds that Spain has a physical presence in his imagination, a visual imagery. Germany, the land of his forefathers does not have this presence although he has visited there several times. Instead, "I have a strange sense of the place in history that Germans occupied. I am very aware of the impact that modern history has on our present day life. Germany has a political and emotional landscape for me as Spain has a physical landscape."

We talked a little about the apparent need for Canadians to put down their own culture, something I felt is very misplaced because in my mind Canada has always had its firm, distinct and worthwhile culture. He thought a little, and then admitted that when he lived in Madrid he found it curious that his Spanish friends had not outside activities after work. Canadians, he realized, get involved in community theatre groups, or a choir, a band, or some other cultural  activity or volunteer work. "In Madrid, nobody had this other life. People worked during the day and then met in the nearest bar." It seemed to him that people in Europe live of their past without adding to it now. "Here (Canada) everybody has something going on. It is a great expression of who you are."

Publication of Olympia, the most German in content of his two books, took place in Canada and the UK in 1998. It immediately attracted public attention, and received literary awards in both countries. Although some of the characters in the book come from his father's hometown, Fürstenfeldbruck in Bavaria, and the father in the book plays an accordion at a club twice a week similar to his own father's hobby, and the book's mother has harrowing experiences in the war like his own mother, Bock describes the stories as complete fiction. "There were no dark secrets (in his family) that I am aware of. Of course, dad and mom have vivid memories of what it was like then."

His mother and her family were refugees from Silesia, whom the Russian marched into Russia during the upheaval caused by the new borders being drawn up along the Oder and Neisse rivers between German and Poland. Eventually she reached Germany, where she met Bock’s father, and they married.

When asked why he chose to introduce the reader to Olympia through imaginary outtakes from Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia, her two-part documentary about the 1936 Berlin Olympics, he said he had seen a documentary about her as he wrote his stories. She represents to him the ultimate romantic artist, who feels responsible only to the art she produces, ignoring any consequences that may be connected with it. Hence, her seeming impenitence about making her propaganda films for Hitler, always pointing out that she never joint the Nazi party. He created a similar character in The Ash Garden, only there the scientist grabbles with his conscience after his initial fascination with his scientific project, the atom bomb.

The novel, The Ash Garden came out last year. It also won awards and became a #1 bestseller. Its connecting thread, tying together three characters, is the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The characters are Anton Böll, a German scientist who worked on the bomb; his wife, Sophie, a half-Jewish refugee from Austria whom he meets in a Canadian refugee camp; the third is documentary film maker, Emiko, who as a young girl was at ground zero when the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Here, too, Lake Ontario provides an intriguing backdrop to the story. Bock knows how to draw lively scenes and make the landscape become visible.

Sadly, no one in Bock's family has read this book, and only his mother has read Olympia. "My mom, she did not and will not read [The] Ash Garden. She resists it because of her history. As for the rest of the family, "they are not frequent readers. Of course, they are happy that I am making a living at it." Thus, he is faced with the all too common fate of writers and artists, whose families are either bewildered by or disinterested in the art they produce.

Although Bock is now firmly rooted in Canada, he still finds himself drawn to Spain and returns as often as he can. In addition he travels a lot to promote his books. Publishers love to send their novelists around the world to book readings. He admits he does not like to read in public. He first experienced this dislike for performance as a child, when his parents wanted him to participate in various activities at the German club to which they belonged.

His novel has recently been translated into Dutch. He has met his translator, whom he greatly admires and to whom he feels a fraternal connection. "It was fascinating meeting her. I felt so close to her because she had spent five months translating my novel, and because she had been so deeply into it." He is quite aware of the pitfalls of translation and was so very happy when she e-mailed him and asked what he meant by a "buggy windscreen". She could not imagine its meaning, thinking of a baby buggy, unaware that he meant squashed bugs splattered across the screen, something that Canadians instinctively will understand. Ash Garden is also being translated into German and will be published in that country in 2003. So far he has not met the German translator of this book.