I am super excited to share my interview with Dennis Bock, author of The Good German, the alternate history novel that I gushed about couple days back. The Good German is a fascinating take at our World War II history, analyzing what Canada and the rest of the world would have looked like if Germany had won the war. There a number of independent events in history that have been changed in the storyline of this book, and were insightful to read about! According to Goodreads, the book has been lauded by Margaret Atwood as “a cunning, twisted, compelling tale of deeply unexpected consequences.”
Hailed by The Globe and Mail as “Canada’s next great novelist,” Dennis Bock’s books include Olympia, The Ash Garden, The Communist’s Daughter, and Going Home Again, shortlisted for the 2013 Scotiabank Giller Prize and winner of the 2014 Best Foreign Novel Award in China.
I hope that this interview will give you a glimpse into the thought that went into it. Let’s hear from Dennis about the book!
Hi Dennis! Can you tell us a little about yourself?
I grew up in Oakville, Ontario and completed a degree in English literature and philosophy at the University of Western Ontario. I teach creative writing at the University of Toronto and the Humber School for Writers. I live in Toronto.
What was the moment when the idea of The Good German first came to be? What made you pursue it?
Writing a novel is a slow, gradual process during which the characters and story they belong to come to me bit by bit, almost imperceptibly. So I can’t say there was a moment when the idea came to me. From the very beginning of the process I try to conjure a sense of place and mood for the journey that awaits, but I never start with story. In the very broadest of terms, I knew I wanted to write an alternate history of the war, and what life in Canada (for German immigrants) might have looked like if the war had gone differently, but I never know where a novel is going until I’m at least halfway there.
The Good German is an alternative history in which Germany wins the Second World War and builds alliances with the United States. I loved that you used Canada as your focal point to understand these incredible changes. Why did you choose to use Canada as the center stage of the plot rather than the US or Germany?
I chose Canada, and small-town Ontario, more specifically, because I wanted to reach into my own childhood for specific detail and mood that would make the story more human and personal. I wanted to humanize the story which, without that delicate attention to and rendering of memory, might have come off as abstract and too impossible to believe. By accessing my own personal history, I was able to bring this wild tale down to street-level.
What kind of research did you pursue while writing this book?
I didn’t do much research. I needed to know a bit about Georg Elser, the man who attempted to assassinate Hitler in 1939, but I prefer to go easy on that. I’m much more interested in building characters and letting the story pull me and my characters forward. I find too much research ends up cluttering up a good story.
Another aspect of The Good German that I thoroughly enjoyed was that your writing created a serious and sad atmosphere. It presented the gravity of the situation really well. What advice would you give to new authors who want to tackle serious content in their books?
Novels have this wonderful ability to create a mood that an attentive reader will feel and understand and want to stay in. The writers like Hemingway and William Trevor and Kafka are great at creating that sorrowful, grey, lonesome feeling as you read. Garcia Marquez dazzles with a sense of wonder and possibility. Colm Toibin suggests the pain of unexpressed longing. Write about what you’re interested in and don’t ever write with an eye to the marketplace. Read good books that mean something to you.
Are there any alternate histories of the world that you would recommend to your readers?
The Plot Against America by Philip Roth is great. That’s probably the only alternate history novel I’ve ever read.
So far, you have primarily written Historical Fiction. What draws you to Historical fiction? What kind of effects does Historical fiction have on its readers and writers?
I’m drawn to this genre for a couple of reasons. As a kid growing up I was always aware of the history that surrounded my family. My parents came over to Canada from Germany in the mid-fifties. As children they’d lived through the war. As adults they tried to move past it. Of course, you can’t. It stays with you. It’s always there. Our past, our history, is always at work on us–even half a century later. Which leads me to the second reason I like writing historical fiction. The novel as an art form is probably the most expressive and interesting form we have as a means of interrogating the passage of time. Time is an essential element in the novel in a way that it’s not in, say, a painting or poem or piece of choreography; and in historical fiction your canvas is wide and deep–the passage of time and how it shapes your characters becomes an integral element in your story.
You are a short story writer as well as novelist. How is writing one different from the other? Do you prefer one over the other?
I love both. As for the differences, it’s about time, again, which is used differently in the story. A short story writer uses time in focused bursts (where the novelist does not) and must learn to locate and compress the salient moments of their protagonist’s life for the faster, shorter expression of that life.
If someone could take away one thing from your book – a lesson, an inspiration, anything – what would you hope it to be?
That the world as we know and experience it is a delicate and vulnerable place, subject to whim and accident and chance, and that our privileges and prejudices as they’re assigned to us by nature of our race and gender and language and country of origin are fleeting, contingent and non-essential.
Hope you enjoyed this interview with Dennis Bock about Historic fiction and The Good German! Connect with him on Twitter, Instagram and Goodreads.
** The Good German is now out in stores. Find it at your local library, bookstores or Amazon. Share your thoughts in the comment! **
Amazon Print
Amazon Kindle
Many thanks to the publisher, Harper Collins Canada, for providing me a review copy of this book! Find a link to my review in the related posts below!
Cover Photo by David McCumskay on Unsplash
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