Valedictory

In all the literature of World War II there is one episode that remains to be told the story of the 303 Squadron of the RAF a unit of valiant Polish airmen who helped to win the Battle of Britain. This is their story a stunning historical novel about exiles who keep on fighting for a homeland to which they can never return patriots who cannot forget the treachery of an accidental ally who is also their countrys oldest enemy idealists who refuse to accept the reality of a dream betrayed by political expedience. Spanning the years 1939-1945 Valedictory is a novel with the sweep of some of the twentieth centurys most momentous events told by a writer whose work has been compared to that of Pasternak Tolstoy Dos Passos and Solzhenitsyn. And it is also the story of one man and the woman who tries to love him but who is responsible for the saddest betrayal of all. It is through the eyes of Ludo Squadron Leader Ludwik Toporski that we see it all: the fall of Poland a harrowing escape through the rubble of Eastern Europe heroic battles in the skies and bitter political struggles and impassioned personal encounters on the ground. In the end Ludo has become a man with nothing left to die for and no reason to live. But he leaves behind one final unforgettable farewell gesture a valedictory to haunt the conscience of an indifferent world. The author of The Thousand Hour Dy and The March completes his trilogy on the ordeal of modern Poland with this powerful novel a literary achievement of the first order.