Olympia by
Dennis Bock

Nominated by:

"You wouldn't be able to tell the story from the way Leni Riefenstahl cut the film. Miles of sub-plot and innuendo snipped and tied into dark ribbons and forgotten, reels of broken ankles and bored nose-picking, a fallen ice-cream cone puddling a Berlin sidewalk." Drawing on imaginary outtakes from Riefenstahl's infamous film of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, Denis Bock weaves together the lives of a family living in the shadow of history. Olympia is the story of post-war German immigrants, as told by their son Peter, born in the New World and raised in the sixties and seventies. Though great figures and events of mid-century touch the lives of this remarkable family, it is the private histories, the grand failings and small triumphs of Peter's family that remain etched in the reader's imagination. From Ruby's struggle to rise above her leukemia and her father's love of severe weather and killing tornadoes, to the saint who witnesses a miracle at the bottom of a drowned Spanish village. Set against the backdrop of some of the most significant Olympic moments of our times - the Nazis' stylish and sinister glorification of the Berlin Olympics and the 1972 Munich hostage-taking in which 11 Israelis were murdered - Olympia offers a bold and refreshing perspective on the tragic relationship between Germans and Jews in this century. Bock writes with onsight and clarity in a breath-taking, beautiful prose that signals the debut of a brilliant new talent. Dennis Bock lived in Spain for many years and has recently resettled in Toronto. His short story Olympia has been selected for both The Journey Prize Anthology and Coming Attractions. He is currently working on a novel.

Here's what the members of the Reading Group based at our Raheny branch library think of Olympia:

A story written by the Canadian, Peter, of German parentage, covers three generations of his family. Beautifully written but too factual for me, with long, boring descriptive passages such as the "blow by blow" account of how he taught his father to fly fish. Perhaps being Irish, I expect family histories to have their funny sides, in retrospect; as in Jacki Lyden's Daughter of the Queen of Sheba, a story of much sadness, which is balanced by cheerful episodes. The most interesting passages in Olympia were those that gave small glimpses of the build up of hatred of Jews, during the 1930's.
(Member of Raheny Library Reading Group)