THE CONFESSIONS OF GABRIEL ASH

An ambassador for a fictional Soviet bloc country gets in trouble for going off-message in Polevoi’s novel.

As a young boy, Gabriel Ash saved the life of King Josef of the small (fictional) European nation of Keshnev; now, 40 years later, he’s accused of trying to kill that nation’s dictator. He’s spent decades as the Keshnevan ambassador to the United Nations, parroting the Soviet line against the West while partaking liberally of the West’s decadent delights in New York City. Then, during the Falkland Islands conflict in 1982, he speaks his mind in front of the U.N. Security Council. The ramifications of his anti-colonial speech prove troublesome for him and deadly for others. Soon, he’s sitting in secluded imprisonment in a castle deep in the “Lesser Alps” of the Warsaw Pact satellite state. There, the menacing Comrade Pavel gives him the chance to record his “confessions” before facing a tribunal. How did it come to this? Ash is the American-born son of missionaries who moved to Europe after his younger brother Willy died of tuberculosis, and they eventually found their way to the village of Rogvald in Keshnev. During the king’s brief visit to that town in 1936, 12-year-old Gabriel saved him from assassination, which gives the youngster celebrity status. Over the course of this novel, Polevoi shows that he knows how to spin out a tale that delivers on all its promises while continuing to surprise to the very end. Readers learn Ash’s story through statements he records for his “confessions,” and in moments when the recorder is off, readers get Ash’s observations of his private imprisonment—and how he plans to escape. In a narrative choice that’s effectively reminiscent of the tall tales of Mark Helprin, Polevoi relates other parts of Ash’s life as the protagonist tells them to a rapt audience—one that’s enamored with the story of the boy who saved the king: “They all want to know what happens next….So do I, and I’ve already lived it.”

A winding but well-told historical drama.