Born and raised in post-war Britain, Mark Zygadlo, like many of his generation with Polish expatriate parents, grew up with half his family in a dark and inaccessible place, behind the iron curtain. Politics, geography, and his father’s reticence concerning the past, conspired to compound a mystery.

This book describes a journey, not just his dying father’s farewell to his country and family, but the much more complicated journey into his memory. On their trip together, Mark discovers a personal history he had very little idea of, and explores the man his father was.

Although this is an essentially personal and highly emotional story, it represents the stories of so many of his father’s generations from Poland. It is not heroic in the conventional sense, although there is heroism, humanity and sacrifice in the face of the violence of the time. More, it is often an account of the way luck and insignificant circumstance can result in survival or tragedy.