Product Description

First published in 1956, an account of a young Polish cavalry officer who was arrested by the Russians, tortured and sentenced to 25 years forced labour. Describes his 3 month journey from Moscow to the prison camp in Siberia, his escape with 6 companions and their journey across the Gobi desert to Tibet and freedom.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #43876 in Books
• Published on: 2000-10-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Customer Reviews

From paranoid nightmare to a triumph of survival.
From page one this is a gripping and absorbing read. We start off with the capture and imprisonment of Polish cavalry officer Slavomir Rawicz, an ordeal that Franz Kafka would have been proud to have written. Accused of spying on the Russians, Slavomir is brutually tortured and beaten before being given a farcical trail that ends up with him being given the sentence of 25 years in a Siberian forced labour camp, on the basis of no evidence and a forged confession. It is here that the action begins to kick in to a more gung-ho spirit. Loaded into freezing cold railway cars and then slowly "chugged" across Russia, almost four thousand miles, to what was thought to be the prison. More agony is piled onto the men as they are chained together and frog marched hundreds of miles through bitter winds and biting snow blizzards until many weeks and many deaths later, prisoners and guards alike, the men finally arrive at their destination. It is a tribute to the writer that while writing of his tribulations he never once seems to feel bitter outrage or acrimony against his Siberian jailers, rather he feels an apathy for them as it seems to be indicated that even the guards here are victims of some small fault against the Russian mother state. Once the prison camp is reached, fans of great escape stories will become gripped as allegiances are formed and slowly an escape plan is hatched. To write too much would be to give too much away, but surfice to say that the team of seven men escape with some help from a very unexpected source and the escape is well and truly underway. From the freezing savage Siberian snow plains to the complete opposite but perhaps more unbearable searing heat of the Gobi, with only a couple of sticks and a tin mug between them, the story will simultaneously make you cry, laugh and occasionally feel proud to be human as the better sides of a man's personality and being are brought to light in a truly touching way. The end of the book comes all too soon, and one feels saddened that we do not learn more of our heros, but perhaps the story needs to finish there as perhaps to learn too much of what happened later might take some of the power from the story; and although part of me would like to know for certain the eventual fate of our intrepid adventurers, I feel they are given a more mythical stature by only existing up to the point of thier journeys completion. Forget trashy, clever, oh so chic summer novels about marketing executives trying to find their Mister Right whilst obsessing about everything they possibly can and lose yourself in a good old fashioned ripping yarn that deserves to go down as one of the greatest stories ever told.

An inspirational story of human courage.
Once I started to read this book I quite literally couldn't put it down. Slavomir's inhuman treatment in Russian prisons after his arrest was quite graphic. The 3-week rail journey taken by the prisoners to Eastern Siberia in the depths of winter with almost no food or water meant that older or weaker men died quickly in the icy cold box-cars. Those who survived that ordeal then had to walk 1000 miles to their camp in the far north. The story really begins with the escape-an adventure of truly epic proportions follows as they journey to India some 4000 miles away. Always they meet with people who have little themselves but are willing to share their homes and their food with the strangers. Several of them die on the journey. The crossing of the Gobi Desert made me wonder how they could possibly survive for 12 days without water in that environment. The encounter with yeti in the Himalayas caused me to question how much of the story was fact and how much was fiction. But that doesn't spoil a story that will remain in readers hearts for long afterwards. Has anyone thought of turning this amazing story into a feature film?

A terrific story of perseverence
....I tend to re-read this book in its entirety every year or so. I also read random chapters much more often and I have probably read this book more times than any other book that I own (The Great Escape comes second).

It's a great story of the hardships endured by prisoners of the Russian system in the early years of world war 2 and covers the capture of Slavomir Rawics while an officer in the Polish cavalry, his interrogation in Russia (for the crime of being a Polish cavalry officer) and the train journey and forced march to the Siberian prison camp with many deaths along the way. With the co-operation of the commandant's wife he has the opportunity to escape and finally does so with a small group of like minded prisoners.

Then begins another long period of torment as they set out to walk south to freedom, which they finally achieve in India.

A great read.