From the Sarmatian Review, September 2003.

The title of this excellent novel refers to the shortness of days in the Artic where many Soviet labor camps were located and where the first-person narrator, a boy of sixteen, was sent by Stalin in 1940, along with one million other Polish citizens, mostly Catholics deemed ideologically unreliable.  From the Afterward we learn that the author's mother was one of the children abandoned in the Gulag, whereas his father's fate was similar to that of the main protagonist.

The plot is brisk, the narrative sparse and clear, and the events dramatic.  Many characters are truly heroic, but the author manages to show their foibles and shortcomings.  Thus they emerge as human, all too human, beings of flesh and blood rather than illustrations in a history book.  The novel follows the nineteenth-century convention used, among others, by Stendhal of describing historical events as seen through the eyes of rank-and-file participants.  Ambros succeeds better than anyone except Varlaam Shalamov (who, however, is too monotonous in large doses) in conveying the reality of the camps and the absolute misery of those who lived there.  Like Auschwitz, the camps of Siberia were meant to squeeze as much work as possible from prisoners, and then let them die of exhaustion.  The protagonist remarks that no Polish person over fifty survived the camps.  Ambros's brief narrative excursion into Kolyma provides the best vignette I know of this hell on earth that the Russians created.

Hitler's attack on the USSR in June 1941 and his subsequent victories in Ukraine, Belarus, and western Russia prompted Stalin to release the surviving Polish political prisoners and urge them to enlist in the Polish Army to fight the Germans.  The protagonist's trek from northern Siberia to recruitment camp in Buzuluk, Uzbekistan, abounds in bloodcurdling situations.  His gradual discovery of what happened to his family is skillfully presented, and so is the Battle of Monte Cassino which again reminds one of Stendhal (except that Monte Cassino was bloodier than Waterloo).  General Wladylaw Anders emerges as a tragic hero, and Winston Churchill as an utmost villain.  As bodies are torn asunder and entrails hang on trees, the reader begins to wish for a love story that would redeem this men-only world of war, hard labor, Soviet brutality, and violence by the Nazis.  The story does materialize.  It seems that the author's novelistic skills kept developing throughout the novel and came to full fruition in its last section.

The eerie echoes of the Jewish holocaust resonate throughout the narrative: "When I got to the camp, the other prisoners told me the guards on the train wanted the older men to die; they were under orders not to help them.  The Soviets did not want to feed men who could not produce."  One remembers similar stories told by Jewish survivors.  The side plot of the orphaned children who could not smile likewise reminds me of the survivors of Nazi concentration camps.

The novel is an easy read, and one wishes for it's presence in drug stores, grocery stores, and at airport bookstores.  One of the novel's strengths is the combination of speed and vividness with which the author describes battles, escapes, and travels where one misstep could lead (and often did) to loss of life.  If you want to introduce an acquaintance steeped in blissful ignorance to the drama of the Second World War, you can find no better means than The Brief Sun.  It is the best English-language "animation" of what really happened in the war and what historians of the victorious nations have failed to tell you. 

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Ardath Mayharom for the 10th Annual Writer's Digest Genre Fiction Competition, April 2003

The book itself is one of the finest I have read in a long awhile.  The style is perfect for the subject matter, reading like the personal recollections of a youngster forced to grow up under appalling conditions, first as a prisoner of the Russians in Siberia, then as a Pole who joined the army of his compatriots that the Russians were enrolling to fight the Germans.  The historical information is not only accurate but immediate and compelling.

This should have been issued by a top publishing house.  The only reason I can imagine for its not being so published is the fact that it reveals, from historical documents and family records, the shameful betrayal of the Poles by Britain and The U.S. when they ceded Poland to the USSR at the end of WWII.  Subsequent attempts to keep anyone from learning the truth about the soldiers who survived Siberia, conquered Germans all the length of Italy, only to be ignored at the end of the war are equally ignoble.  This is a ten on anybody’s list.

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From the Midwest Book Review, May 2002.

Robert Ambros' The Brief Sun is a compelling historical novel within the context of the Cold War Era and based on a true story of desperation and heroism. In the dark years of World War II, Polish prisoners in a Siberian labor camp seize advantage of Hitler's betrayal of the Soviet Union to form an army in exile, and fight their way home. A powerful, gripping historical saga, The Brief Sun clearly establishes Robert Ambros as a gifted author who will leave the reader eagerly awaiting his next effort.
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From the Polish American Journal, September 2002.

Ambros has taken the World War II experiences of his parents and uncles to provide an historical fiction of their deportation to Siberian prison camps. When released, they trudge to Italy to serve in General Ander's
Army.  While many accounts have been written on the atrocities and horrors of prison camps, little has been provided about General Ander's Army.  Ambros created a moving fictional memoir of 16 year old Andrzej, deported to a Siberian labor camp and surviving only through the compassion of his fellow prisoners. When the Germans invade the Soviet Union, Stalin agrees to a Polish Army in Exile. Released, the prisoners
trudge thousands of miles through Siberia, without a map, ill-clothed and half-starved, heading south. With rags on their feet and wooden guns they  train to take part in General Ander's battle against the Germans,
finally opening up the road to Rome for the Allies.  They became an undefeated army in exile within reach of their homeland.  Anders reported to the Government in Exile in London, and British Prime Minister Macmillan declared Ander's Army one of the greatest fighting units in World War II. But in a betrayal of trust at the Yalta
Conference, they become an army without a country.  The book is a passionate account of the resilience of man and compromises that left Poland at the mercy of the Soviets.  

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From The Newsletter of the Polish Library in Washington, June/July 2002.

This is a well-written novel by a surgical pathologist living in upstate New York.  It is based on extensive recollections of his many family members, who experienced various phases of World War II, in particular the infamous Siberian exile, followed by the campaign of Gen. W. Anders and his 2^nd Corps in Italy.  The author deftly merges many sources, including historical accounts, to offer an illuminating insight into the events described; he has an uncanny ear for dialogue.  Judging by the modest words printed on the back cover, this novel is under-advertised.

It begins with grim scenes in Northern Siberia, where many Poles in the summer of 1941 are suddenly released from camps and invited to join Gen. Anders’ formation, while many others miss the opportunity.  The most gripping part of the narrative really begins where the hero of the novel, Andrzej Bartkowski, sails from Krasnodovodsk on the Caspian Sea for Pahlevi in Persia.  Ambros shows a remarkable understanding of the eventual predicament these soldiers face in Italy, but he avoids tedious military accounts and instead focuses on individuals.  This novelistic approach adds to the richness of the book.  Most of us know this segment of history, but it is very instructive to look at it from one person’s point of view.

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