The Ash Garden [Hardcover]

Fifty years on, at the annual commemoration ceremony in Columbia University New York, a victim of that disaster confronts one of the perpetrators in the person of a scientist involved in the development of the atom bomb.

On 6th August 1945 young Emiko Amai was playing by the river near her home with her small brother when they saw a large black object falling from the sky. Emiko's parents were killed in the mushrooming cloud of the atomic explosion and her brother died subsequently from his injuries. Emiko herself was badly burned and became, in her own words ' a scarred and disfigured girl of six with only half a face'. Nine years later, she was selected, along with twenty-four other young girls, to travel to the USA for reconstructive surgery. There she remained and little is revealed about her life in the interim until 1995 when she re-emerges, unmarried and childless,with a new face and a successful career as a documentary film maker.

Anton Boll was a German physicist who, in the late ninteen thirties, became disillusioned with the political situation in Germany and with the direction his reasarch team was pursuing. He defected to the USA where he was assimilated into the Manhattan Project working on development of the atomic bomb. At Los Alamos, he aand his colleagues tested the bonb, naively protecting themselves from radiation with suntan lotion. At the end of the war, Anton travelled to Hiroshima to analyse the effects of the atomic fall-out. He was appalled by the carnage and assisted the helpless medical teams to treat casualties.

The lives of these two characters are skilfully interwoven, together with that of Anton's Jewish wife Sophie who escaped from Nazi Germany at the beginning of the war. By a circuituos route, she ended up in a detention camp in Canada from where she was rescued by meeting and marrying Anton. Sophie was afflicted with lupus and bore the typical butterfly facial rash mirroring the disfigurement suffered by Emiko. When her illness progresses she chooses to die of kidney failure when her life could have been prolonged by a kidney transplant.

The main protagionists in the novel are fictitious but several factual characters appear in the supporting cast. Notable among these is Major Thomas Ferebee, bombardier on the twelve man crew of the Enola Gay who flew the fatal mission to deliver the bomb, aware that they were involved in something very special but unaware of the enormity of their deed.

With subtlety and sensitivity, Bock explores the issues of justification, responsibility and guilt, remorse and reparation, ethics, morality and human rights. Questions remain unanswered stimilating the reader to examine his own philosophies.
Written in flashbacks in beautiful, understated prose, this novel deserves to win prizes.

Bock has described his interest in writing fiction as “raising big questions” of human society. Major topics that escape clear black and white answers. For example, the scientist joined the Los Alamos team because building the atom bomb “ was the only way to end the war”. Yet, during his research mission to Hiroshima to “scientifically assess the bomb’s impact”, he is exposed to the human suffering of innocent civilians. In "The Ash Garden", Bock proves himself a master in exploring the grey zones between right and wrong, innocence and responsibility. The narrative moves towards the anticipated and necessary confrontation between the victim and the scientist, in her view co-responsible for her suffering. The outcome is everything but clear-cut or obvious, but consistent within the story and the intentions of the author. A deeply moving and beautiful book with important messages for us all. [Friederike Knabe]

Bock writes with style and the characters are crisp and deep, but not Tom Wolfeishly pretentious. He has written an original novel, at a time when originality is hard to find.

Enjoyable and thoughtful/provoking.