Dimensions: 1.00'' x 9.50'' x 6.50'' 320 pages Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group Publication Date: May 1997 Hardcover ISBN: 0684811022

An intimate history of Poland told through the personal experience of restoring a house in a village plagued by invasion and disaster, Full Circle is about ordinary people whose lives fill this moving and evocative book, but Sikorski is also acutely aware of the grand wheels of history and politics at work not only on a house, but a village and a country.

Everyone dreams of restoring a country home. For an American, it might be a cottage by a lake; for a Frenchman, a stone house in Provence. But for Radek Sikorski, a Polish exile living in England, the dream seems impossible--until 1989, and the fall of Communism, when he could at last return to his native land.

Full Circle is a moving personal and political account of a country and its people emerging from under the rubble of Communism. For Sikorski, rebuilding a dworek (manor house) known as Chobielin was not just a real-estate investment--it was a literal and symbolic contribution to the task of rebuilding his country. Recovering from what Sikorski calls a "moral hangover" following the years of Communism, the Polish people have been battling former Party members masquerading as Polish patriots, con men making fortunes on shady currency deals, and corruption and confusion that threaten to strangle democracy and capitalism before they even have a chance to develop.

With a novelist's eye for revealing detail and a politician's instinct for the deeper currents running through society, Sikorski tells the dramatic story of his family--his childhood under Communism, his parents' resistance to authoritarianism, his relatives on all sides of the political spectrum (including a great-uncle who survived Buchenwald and Dachau). At the same time, literally unearthing Polish history on the grounds of his home--one of his discovery was a silver half grosz piece dating from the sixteenth century--Sikorski also brings to life for American readers the dramatic history of Poland, where national identity has always been problematic. Occupied by Warsaw Pact troops under Communism, carved up by German and Soviet Armies during World War II, invaded by Prussians, Russians and Teutons throughout the centuries, Poland has constantly struggled under the burden of foreign conquerors.

An engrossing personal memoir, Full Circle is also a fascinating insider's account of the political transformation of a country that has come full circle many times over the years in its quest for a national identity.

Radek Sikorski is a resident fellow at AEI and director of its New Atlantic Initiative.