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The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom
Slavomir Rawicz
- Unabridged
Narrator: John Lee
Length: 9 hours and 35 min.
£9.89
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£3.99
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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 4,000 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.
©2006 Slavomir Rawicz; (P)2006 Blackstone Audio Inc.
Critics Reviews
"Positively Homeric." (London Times)
"One of the most amazing, heroic stories of this or any other time." (Chicago Tribune)
"It is a book filled with the spirit of human dignity and the courage of men seeking freedom." (Los Angeles Times)
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Review
1/1 registered users found this helpful
Long swindle, more like
02/11/2009
There's something about this kind of book that attracts people like me to pay good money to read (or listen to it): namely that it's a factual account of something that happened. Tales of endurance and hardship are only inspiring if they've happened to real people. It's hard to get inspired by the exploits of Reme in Ratatouille for example.
My suspicions about this book were only aroused near the end with Rawicz's description of, yes, I'm serious, an encounter with two Yeti. Eight feet tall (falling to seven a little later).
I'm the kind of person who wants to know how it ended beyond the book. You know, what was the rest of his life like? What about the others on the walk? What ultimately happened to them? So I consulted Wikipedia, which in no time at all informed me that this story (not least the Yeti episode) doesn't stand close scrutiny.
All of which leaves me, frankly, feeling like I've been swindled. I hope this review serves as a 'errata' sticker for the front cover of this book.
To sum up? Well written but deceptive.
Most Recent Reviews
Gripping
09/11/2007
I was completely gripped by this astonishing and inspiring story. I have a long commute and sometimes my attention span is not great, but with this book I was actually pleased when the motorway traffic ground to a halt and the journey took longer than planned. I constantly wanted to know what was going to happen next and this book has stayed in my thoughts since I finished it.
