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

by Slavomir Rawicz

Overview

"I hope The Long Walk will remain as a memorial to all those who live and die for freedom, and for all those who for many reasons could not speak for themselves."—Slavomir Rawicz

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, through China, the Gobi Desert, Tibet, and over the Himalayas to British India is a remarkable statement about man's desire to be free.

While the original book sold hundreds of thousands of copies, this updated paperback version includes a new Afterword by the author, as well as the author's Foreword to the Polish book. Written in a hauntingly detailed, no holds barred way, the new edition of The Long Walk is destined to outrank its classic status and guaranteed to forever stay in the reader's mind.

***


Six-time Academy Award–nominee Peter Weir (Master and Commander, The Truman Show, and The Dead Poets Society) recently directed The Way Back, a much-anticipated film based on The Long Walk. Starring Colin Farrell, Jim Sturgess, and Ed Harris, it is due for release in 2011.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781493022618
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	04/01/2016
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	134,026
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

Foreword Ronald Downing vii

Introduction to the Polish Edition ix

I Kharkov and the Lubyanka 1

II Trial and Sentence 12

III From Prison to Cattle Truck 23

IV Three Thousand Miles by Train 37

V Chain Gang 47

VI End of the Journey 58

VII Life in Camp 303 67

VIII The Wife of the Commissar 81

IX Plans for Escape 93

X Seven Cross the Lena River 105

XI Baikal and a Fugitive Girl 116

XII Kristina Joins the Party 128

XIII Across the Trans-Siberian Railway 139

XIV Eight Enter Mongolia 152

XV Life Among the Friendly Mongols 165

XVI The Gobi Desert: Hunger, Drought and Death 177

XVII Snake Meat and Mud 191

XVIII The Last of the Gobi 203

XIX Six Enter Tibet 215

XX Five By-Pass Lhasa 228

XXI Himalayan Foothills 241

XXII Strange Creatures 253

XXIII Four Reach India 264

Afterword to the 1997 Edition 274

Editorial Reviews

"A poet with steel in his soul."—New York Times

"One of the most amazing, heroic stories of this or any other time."—Chicago Tribune

“A book filled with the spirit of human dignity and the courage of men seeking freedom.”
—Los Angeles Times

“Heroism is not the domain of the powerful; it is the domain of people whose only other alternative is to give up and die…. [The Long Walk] must be read—and reread, and passed along to friends.”—National Geographic Adventure

“The ultimate human endurance story…told with clarity, vivid description, and a good dash of romance and humor.”—The Vancouver Sun

"The Long Walk is a book that I absolutely could not put down and one that I will never forget..."—Stephen Ambrose

"One of the epic treks of the human race. Shackleton, Franklin, Amundsen.... History is filled with people who have crossed immense distances and survived despite horrific odds. None of them, however, has achieved the extraordinary feat Rawicz has recorded. He and his companions crossed an entire continent-the Siberian arctic, the Gobi desert and then the Himalayas-with nothing but an ax, a knife, and a week's worth of food.... His account is so filled with despair and suffering it is almost unreadable. But it must be read-and re-read." —Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm

"Essentially it comes down to some sort of inner tenacity and that is what is so gripping about the book because you know that this is actually about all of us. It's not just some Polish bloke who wanted to get home. It's about how we all struggle on every day. Somehow or other we find a reason to keep on going and it's the same here but on an epic scale".—Benedict Allen, explorer and bestselling author of Into the Abyss and Edge of Blue Heaven

From the Publisher