The Long Walk: The True Story Of A Trek To Freedom - Paperback

by Slavomir Rawicz (Author)

The harrowing true tale of seven escaped Soviet prisoners who desperately marched out of Siberia through China, the Gobi Desert, Tibet, and over the Himalayas to British India.

Back Jacket

In 1941, the author and six other fellow prisoners escaped a Soviet labor camp in Yakutsk--a camp where enduring hunger, cold, untended wounds, untreated illnesses, and avoiding daily executions were everyday feats. Their march over thousands of miles by foot--out of Siberia and through China, the Gobi Desert, Tibet, and over the Himalayas to British India--was a remarkable journey through some of the most inhospitable conditions on the face of the earth. Written in a hauntingly detailed, no-holds-barred way, the book inspired the forthcoming Peter Weir film The Way Back, starring Colin Farrell, Jim Sturges, and Ed Harris. Previous editions have sold hundreds of thousands of copies; this edition includes an afterword written by the author soon before his death, as well as the author's introduction to the book's Polish edition. Guaranteed to forever stay in the reader's mind, it will remain a testament to the strength of the human spirit, and the universal desire for freedom and dignity.

Author Biography

Slavomir Rawicz lived in England after the war, settling near Nottingham and working as a handicrafts and woodworking instructor, a cabinetmaker, and later as a technician in architectural ceramics at a school of art and design. He married an Englishwoman, with whom he had five children. He retired in 1975 after a heart attack, and lived a quiet life in the countryside until his death in 2004.