The Long Walk

Although there has been a great deal of debate about the authenticity of this account, I still enjoyed reading it and comparing it with the accounts told me by my own protagonist.

It is a heroic tale of survival that conveys much of the horror and desperation experienced by so many in wartime Europe, and the displacement and loss suffered by so many, but also the hope and determination to escape and defy all the odds. The parallels with the story my own protagonist told are uncanny.

Slawomir Rawicz was a Polish Army lieutenant who was imprisoned by Russian intelligence agents after the German invasion of Poland in 1941. His book describes how he and six others escaped from the Siberian Gulag and travelled on foot through the Gobi Desert to Tibet, the Himalayas, and India. Much like Henri Charriere’s Papillon, Rawicz’s story is so fantastical that many have questioned its veracity. But the book still appealed to me as, the more I have read such stories the more I have understood that the truth really is stranger than fiction, and often they faithfully convey an… show more.

A brutal and harrowing tale of what men will endure to find freedom. Polish cavalry lieutenant Slavomir Rawicz is taken prisoner by Russian “liberators”. Tortured, convicted, and sent to a labor camp, Rawicz refuses to break. What if he and a small group of friends can escape along the route the Russians will least expect? What if they flee south, through Russia, Mongolia, China, Tibet, and finally, into India? An epic tale of survival and loss, this is a true story that deserves to be remembered.