This book is not a true story. If it was true I would have given 5 stars. I lost interest when he claimed to have gone 12 days without water in the Gobi desert. Then he climbed the Himalayas with no gear and saw two Yetis.

In 1939, 24 year-old Polish cavalry officer Slavomir Rawicz was arrested by the Russians on suspicion of being a spy. For a year, he was tortured, incarcerated in various prisons—including Moscow’s notorious Lubyanka—and finally sent off to a Siberian labour camp. Camp 303, somewhat south of Yakutsk, was the place where Rawicz, along with some four thousand-odd other prisoners, ended up (having walked much of the way). Rawicz had been sentenced to twenty-five years in Siberia, but his own unwillingness to spend the bulk of his life in Siberia, as well as friendly (and practical) advice from an unexpected source made him resolve to try for the impossible: to escape. And, since Siberia was surrounded, for so many miles, by hostile terrain and enemy armies, escape would mean a long, long walk.

The Long Walk is the story of how Rawicz, along with six other prisoners of various nationalities, escaped from Camp 303 and trekked some four thousand miles, south from Siberia through Mongolia, the ruthless Gobi Desert, Tibet, and finally into British India, and safety.

The adventure starts from the very first page of the book, with Rawicz describing the interrogations and tortures he was put through in an attempt to make him confess to being the spy the Russians imagined him to be. The travesty of a court trial, the sentencing, the long and arduous journey to Siberia, the settling in at Camp 303, and the first glimmerings of the audacious escape plan… all are gripping. And, as the plan swings into action and the men set off on their perilous journey, it becomes even more so.

I enjoyed every moment of this book; not once did my interest flag, not once did I look to see how many pages were left. It was one roller-coaster ride all the way, as the men (joined early on by another and very unexpected escapee) made their way, battling the elements, trying somehow to keep body and soul together. The complete strangers who offered, unasked, hospitality and advice and food. The resourcefulness of the men, the near-despair, the humour, the poignancy of losing one who had become a beloved friend. The lucky accidents, the odd encounters: everything about The Long Walk is enthralling.

An amazing testimony to the resilience of the human spirit, body and mind, plus a fabulous adventure. Highly recommended.

Polish cavalry officer Slavomir Rawicz was captured and imprisoned by the Soviets in November 1939. Since he spoke fluent Russian (his mother was Russian) they assumed he was a spy and tried to torture a confession from him. He resolutely refused. Eventually he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to twenty-five years hard labor. After trekking several thousand miles to Siberia, he wound up at Camp 303. He slowly formed a plan and the nerve to escape from the camp. He would go south to India, another trek of thousands of miles. Recruiting six other prisoners, they hid supplies and waited patiently until they could get away. The last two-thirds of the book describes their desperate travels through Siberia, Mongolia, the Gobi Desert, and Tibet on the way to freedom in India.

The story is highly dramatic and well-told. The tale is an amazing travel log and an astonishing witness of human perseverance against so many difficult and seemingly insurmountable hardships. Starvation, thirst, injury, and exposure were constant enemies. Moments of humor and hope kept them going, along with the memories of life at home. The implicit comfort that at least Rawicz survived to tell the tale helps.

The book was made into the 2011 movie The Way Back directed by Peter Weir (of Master and Commander fame).

Highly recommended.

This is the story of the author (called Slav), a Polish soldier, who was captured by the Russians, sentenced to 20 years of hard labor in Siberia, and forced to walk there with other prisoners through a hard Siberian winter. While there, he planned an escape and a 4,000 (yes, four thousand) mile trek south to freedom for himself and six other prisoners. First, through the harsh late Siberian winter, then across the blazing Gobi Desert in the heart of summer (but why?, why not around?), then through Tibet in gathering winter and then over the high altitude Himalayas in the heart of winter with no climbing gear (but why? why not east or west to civilization?). They could carry little food or water, had to live off the land, had only the clothes on their backs (and probably not even those after the Gobi) and had only what shelter they could find at night. It took one year, he says (could you do this in a year if you were fully equipped?), And they survived? Are you kidding me? I would love to believe this, and hope that nobody would make up such a story, but it truly doesn't seem possible. Is it significant that Slav never attempted to reunite with this three surviving companions, whose whereabouts were never known or even sought? It's all just a bit much. Amazing story; but is it fact or fiction? Put me down as skeptical.

I am on page 79 in the book, right now the book is really taking a new step. The reason is since they have arrived at the camp i think 203 and made their barracks and have seen the secenery. before this they were making the long walk just to get their after his long bias trial were he really had no choise but to serve 25 years of hard labor I think that this book really represents dehumanisation with the treatment of the main characters, and comradship with the prisoners going though the horrible experiance of just getting to the camp. all and all this book is turing into a really awesome book!!!!!!!!!!!! :)

The long Walk 0.5v
The author of this book is Slavomir Rrawicz, he has only written on book and it’s amazing. His story was so compelling that they made a movie called “The Way Back” which was based on his Russian escape with his comrades.
Many other people liked the book as I do including: Los Angeles times, Chicago Tribune, and The New York Times. When I started reading about him and how he got to the prison it saddened me to know that all of this was true and it happened to lots of people because of race or creed.
I think a reader who is; in love with historical non-fiction with a plot, non-Russian enthusiast, people who want a book that they can use for a theme of dehumanization in a paper or papers. I really loved when they make jokes even know they are in situations that are terrible. I think that, that shows humanity and comradeship, because of what they have been though the deserts, and wilderness. That they can laugh and are not mentally broken and autonomous like some people would be in this circumstances.
If you like all the books that I read like Percy Jackson series. The New York Times said "a poet with steel in his soul". when I started reading the part when they found the girl I was Like why? And that suck that she was basically stranded there. When I got to the desert part I felt bad for them but I was surprised at the death rates and how nice people were to them. On page 158 it says “light hit the tops of the billowing dunes and threw a sharp shadow across the deep-sanded floors of the intervening little valleys” I really like the description of the Gobi desert and it really caught my fancy. Before that the quote “the sharp chill of the desert night” really made me think of how cold It can really get even know they are in a desert. In chapter for Plans for Escape, I found that there escape easier than expected with little to no resistance. I think this is because the Camp wasn’t expecting that they would escape and that even If they did they would probably die after the first two nights. I admired their bravery when they escaped and how they ran so far before stopping and I know that I couldn’t ever do something as extreme as that.
I think that this author should of got an reward other than a movie out of it because it is so inspiring mostly I think its saying don’t give up, and were not going to take it. I would give them the Inspiration reward that would be epic and show how awesome it is.
In all right now the book has turned out awesome and I will be continuously reading and enjoying this master piece as you would if you glance on page 1.

An incredible story (so incredible that you can't help wondering how much of it is true) about courage, ambition and a relentless desire to survive the most unbelievable (as in extreme) weather conditions you can imagine, ranging from creepy cold to unbearable heat and again extreme cold, all of it garnishing a long and physically excruciating journey of about 6,500 km.

If so much as half of it is true, this would still be a fantastic story, and the fact that the book had a ghost writer or that the events depicted here didn't happen to Rawicz (as some people claimed), but to another man, is not that important, nor relevant in order to understand and empathize with the great trials and tribulations these men have gone through.

This has been on my shelf for years and I've no clue what took me so long to read it. Epic true story of prisoners escaping from a Siberian work camp and WALKING to India...yeah, look at a map on that folks. Through Siberia, Russia, Mongolia, China, the Gobi Desert, Tibet, the Himalayas...that's a lot of geography and all on foot. Mind boggling.

One thing that struck me early on as he was talking about his initial capture and how they tried to torture him into confessing...next generation reading literature like this and the evil faceless bad guy isn't going to be the Russians, the Germans, or whoever...it's going to be us.

The Long Walk is really three stories in one. There is a story of imprisonment, a story of escape, and a story of an unbelievable flight to freedom. The author, Slavomir Rawicz, was a young Polish Cavalry officer who fought against the Nazi invasion from the west in 1939 . . . the beginning of World War II. At the same time, of course, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east. When Poland lost, Rawicz fell under suspicion of the Communist occupiers of his homeland and was arrested. He was transported to a prison in the Ukraine and, eventually, to the KGB's Lubyanka Prison in Moscow, where, after a farce of a trial, he was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 25 years hard labor.

Rawicz's imprisonment narratives fascinated me. Like a train wreck, I could not look away from his descriptions of man's inhumanity to man - to him. Throughout his imprisonment, Rawicz was tortured - repeatedly, gruesomely, painfully, and disgustingly. I do not believe that the image of the kishka, Russian for "the intestine" will ever clear from my mind. All this was done in an unsuccessful effort to bring about his confession to the fabricated crimes for which he was eventually convicted.

After sentencing, Rawicz is transported or, I should say, transports himself to a labor camp in Siberia. After setting the scene there, the second story begins. Again, it is the story of escape. And one that would make Steve McQueen proud. It is complete with thorough planning, guts, and more than a little help from an unlikely source.

But escaping the Soviet prison camp was far from the end of the stories. Rawicz still had to get out of Siberia, out of the massive Soviet Union, and all the way to friendly territory in India. The book's title, though it can refer to Rawicz's entire journey or the journey through life itself, is really a specific reference to this third story. I found this last part of the book lacking a bit. The walk was, fittingly, very long. But, unfortunately, while this story was filled with some random anecdotes bordering on interesting (and one fanciful . . . Bumble anyone?), it was mostly just walking, one step in front of the other. As a reader, though never in any comparable peril, I felt on a long journey too, one page after the other, trudging toward the end of the book.

It is a tribute to Rawicz's story of imprisonment that I gave an overall rating higher than three stars. And it is a comment on travelogue finish that I did not give five.

Some have cast doubt on the truth of Rawicz's stories. But I don't really care. Rawicz says that they are true and I have no desire to doubt him.

In an Afterword written 41 years after the book was originally published, the author wrote of his purpose . . . "What is most important," he said, "is the deeply felt conviction that freedom is like oxygen, and I hope The Long Walk is a reminder that when lost, freedom is difficult to regain."

Whether every word in The Long Walk is true or isn't, I have been reminded.

I've somehow wound up reading some epic adventure/survival stories over the last year or so like Endurance and Unbroken, and this one is right up there with them. I realize, of course, that there is a lot more contention about whether these events actually took place.

To start with, I'll say that the author seems to have chosen to focus the story almost entirely on the portion from which he is captured by the Red Army to the point when they reach British protection in Northern India. This makes it more similar to Endurance than Unbroken because we get literally nothing of the story of Rawicz or any of his surviving companions after the time of their epic trek. That was frustrating, and doesn't exactly do the story any favors in terms of its believability.

I'm not going to go and do a bunch of research to try to find out whether this is true or not. From what little I have seen, there doesn't seem to be enough to really discredit it, anyway. And the fact that for almost the entirety of the book, he is either kept away from all others who might have corroborated his story or is traveling through desolate places meeting only very few people, almost all of whom weren't connected with the wider world and didn't speak the same language as he or any of his companions did, means that there is very little chance of the story ever being conclusively proven or disproven.

It was interesting to read it as a historian, trying to pick up little nuances here or there that would suggest it's reliability. I think, often, the truth is stranger than fiction. And including details like seeing two unidentifiable creatures that he later thinks might have been yetis in the Himalayas, which might put some people off, actually to me gives the story more credence because he's not afraid to tell everything he remembers, and then also could very well be evidence of how the final part of the trip through the Himalayas was so devastating on him and his companions that he started to hallucinate some. That would also support his month of delusion and recovery after reaching India, which didn't make for a satisfying end to the story, but does have the ring of truth. If he were making it up, he could have made the ending so much more satisfying.

Overall, a remarkable story in so many ways. One I might very well read again. And in the end for me it's proof that WWII has supplied us, and will continue to supply us through historical fiction, with a seemingly infinite amounts of stories filled with the absolute worst of human cruelty as well as the boundless heights of the human spirit and will to survive and put life back together.

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This is a great book. The author is very clear about what is happening each step of the way, from his torture to his trial to the forced march through Siberia, but never dwells too long on the details, so you are able to read it without becoming exhausted. The escape is thrilling to read and amazing in fact. The only seeming let down in my view is that he did not know what happened to the other men who survived the escape with him. I liked reading this book very much, and shudder to think that the movie will create conflict on screen where none existed between the men. We shall see. Oh yeah but it doesn't much matter as the story may be entirely made up or possibly stolen from another Polish escapee. I should research these things before I read them, so as to be less disappointed. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6098218.stm

It’s a great tale, but it really doesn’t ring true.
Nice touch with the Yeti.

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Last seen 1953, Everest.

In 1941, the author and six other prisoners escaped from a Siberian labor camp, and marched on foot across Siberia, Tibet, the Himalayas, and the Gobi Desert to reach India and freedom. An unforgettable true story of hardship and suffering and the extent people will go to survive. It's an amazing story.