Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

In The Long Walk, Slavomir Rawicz tells the story of his escape from a WWII Soviet prison camp and his long walk to freedom. The story is gripping, even painful at times; but it has one major problem: it is probably not a true story. This book's genesis came when a British reporter in the 1950s was doing research on Yeti sightings and came across Slavomir Rawicz, who claimed to have seen an unidentified "monster" after escaping from a Soviet prison camp. After meeting with Rawicz, the reporter realized that the story of Rawicz's escape is a much better story and helps Rawicz write the story of the escape and long trek. Although the impetus of the story should raise some doubts with the reader (a Yeti sighting), because the book is billed as "the True Story of a Trek to Freedom," the reader quickly becomes engrossed in the story. Rawicz was a Polish Army officer captured by the Germans at the beginning of World War II and sent to a work camp deep in Siberia. Rawicz and some companions engineered an escape, and for the next year they traveled southward trying to escape Soviet Russia. At times they were at the verge of starvation, and the reader cannot help but feel real pain when Rawicz tells of the companions who died along the trip, but they persevered through the cold of Siberia and the heat of the Gobi desert before finally meeting some British soldiers in India. It's a real triumph - but, it's likely not true. As Anne Applebaum points out in her Pulitzer Prize-winning history Gulag, most experts who have examined this story find it "unconvincing." No one has been able to locate any records from Rawicz's time as a prisoner, and one of the leading Russian historians of the Gulag carried on correspondence with Rawicz and does not believe his story. [EDIT: In October 2006, the BBC found some records that show that Rawicz was a prisoner in the Gulag but was released by the NKVD and sent to a refugee camp in Iran. He did not escape and flee with a small band of ex-prisoners through the frozen wastelands of Siberia or through the Gobi Desert en route to India.] The fact that many want to believe this inspiring story shouldn't overcome the fact that experts who have corresponded with the author, who have searched for his records, and who have seriously considered the details of his escape, do not believe this story. This book's power lies in the premise that it's a true story; but if you take that away, it's just a hoax that has been played on generations of readers.