Twenty-six-year-old cavalry officer Slavomir Rawicz was captured by the Red Army in 1939 during the German-Soviet partition of Poland and sent to the Siberian Gulag. In the spring of 1941, he escaped with six of his fellow prisoners, including one American. Thus began their astonishing trek to freedom.
With no map or compass but only an ax head, a homemade knife, and a week's supply of food, the compatriots spent a year making their way on foot to British India, through four thousand miles of the most forbidding terrain on earth. They braved the Himalayas, the desolate Siberian tundra, icy rivers, and the great Gobi Desert, always a hair's breadth from death. Finally arriving, Rawicz reenlisted in the Polish army to fight the Germans.
Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating: Summary: The Long Walk Comment: This is one of the best books I have ever read. I sit back and wonder how a true story such as this one can't be #1 for years. Customer Rating: Summary: All's Well That Ends Well---It's the Getting There That's Trouble Comment: An amazing almost unbelievable story of arrest, mock trial, imprisonment in Siberia, escape and a trek to freedom covering thousands of miles.
Had this book been written in this day and time, people (media types) would have investigated it, found reasons to discredit it and claim it to be false. The story, frankly, does sound unbelievable, treking 20 to 30 miles a day in ankle deep snow and through the shifting sands of the Gobi Desert, but far be it from me to discredit the human spirit, and, ultimately, that's what this book is about--the human spirit's will to survive--to live against the odds.
One wishes there were more specific detail to make the story more alive and vivid, but the fact that it was written is enough--more than enough--to make this book a worthwhile read.
Example after example of man's humanity to man overcoming man's inhumanity to man. That is written at all proves the story ends well.
Mr. Shakespeare said, "All's Well That Ends Well," and that's true. But it is the getting there that can be horrific and terrible. And this book tells an unbelievable story of escape, humanity and redemption.
Customer Rating: Summary: Really Good Comment: I got this book from my school's library last year thinking it would be interesting, seeing as it had a general WWII theme (i love war literature), but I was surprised. This book is unequaled. It shows you an entirely new perspective of human potential.
Really, you'll be taken aback. Customer Rating: Summary: Brilliant Book - Perhaps best I've ever read. Comment: This is quite simply one of the best books I've ever read. Brilliantly written with a sharp eye toward emotion and detail. A gripping and touching tale. I laughed, I cried....
I've seen the stuff about it not being true and I just don't believe it. The evidence against it is flimsy, but more to the point is that if it is a fabrication then the author - or the author's landlord whom he dictated it to - missed his calling as a writer. He surely would have made a fortune if he'd written 20 more like it. The imagination it would have taken to come up with such a gripping tale, the virtuosity of the writer in putting emotion and detail on the page would rank him with the great writers of our time.
I recently read another book by a Jewish psychologist named Victor Frankl entitled "Man's Search for Meaning". It's a concentration camp memoir coupled with a psychological technique "logotherapy" that he created out of his experiences. Early on in his imprisonment he got together with some other imprisoned medical professionals and their conclusion was "everything they taught us in school was wrong". A man can't live through this, a man can't live through that. But the Nazis did this, that and the other to him and he survived. Rawicz didn't go through anything worse than Frankl went through.
I've seen other so called "inconsistencies" that are almost laughable. One was that handcuffs and chains were Czarist so the Soviets would have never used them. Stalin killed 10s of millions of people and brutalized 10s of millions more - are we really to believe he had an aversion to chains? Then there's the whole Yeti nonsense. I don't know what Rawicz saw up there, but a better argument against his story is that the Yeti was the craziest thing he saw on this journey - people who go through a lot less report seeing aliens, purple elephants, Abraham Lincoln, etc. etc. etc. To hang your argument on something like that is ridiculous. Not to mention the fact that the incident filled all of one page in the book. Customer Rating: Summary: Superb Read Comment: My sister recommended this book to me. As a University History instructor, I was fascinated by the story. It was difficult to put the work down - the story is riveting and action packed. I recommend the book to history lovers, action lovers and those who love true stories
