The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom

It is amazing to find this book and to read so many reviews on it. I first read it when I was 10 years old, forty three years ago to be exact, and I have never forgotten it. I remember as a child being unable to put the book down and the images of swimming the Lena River and tramping through the Gobi Desert have stayed with me all this time. I would need to read it again (with the benefit of the experience of long distance running and a unit in Russian History) to ascertain whether this book could lay claim to reasonable accuracy or whether the survival adventures recounted are impossible as one reviewer has claimed. The believability of the survival notwithstanding, this book makes a great read. That I have remembered it all these years is surely testament to its story telling impact and its endurance.

I bought this for a friend. I read it a few years ago and loved it.

Well written, intense, story of survival, grief, pain and the courage of men hanging on for their freedom. Once started, you cannot put it down.

The Long Walk is one of the greatest books I have ever read. The decades long battle over its authenticity is, I think, a testament to its power. Only a work of literature that brings such palpable reality to the reader could have withstood the firestorm of controversy surrounding it from so many corners.

Concerning its authenticity, I think there should be some humility shown on all sides. There are those who would desire to believe it simply because it is a great tale. Others would seek to "burst the bubble" of all involved out of a cynical doubt in the human capacity for greatness.

Several considerations should be made when considering the recently revealed documents disproving Rawicz's claims: 1. Rawicz' story is too detailed to have been entirely fabricated. Whether or not he himself participated in the events he describes is doubtful, but that the events themselves or something like them occurred is, in my mind, undeniable; 2. Placing a great deal of trust in Soviet documents from the Stalin era has never been a wise course to take. The fact that Rawicz, according to these documents, rejoined the Polish Army the day after he was released from the Gulag (remarkable considering the debilitating conditions he obviously suffered from in later life due to his imprisonment), make it seem a little too clean.

The most likely occurrence, in my own mind, is that Rawicz appropriated the story from a group of survivors who underwent a journey similar to the one he describes. The BBC article makes this clear:

"A clue may come from the story of Rupert Mayne, a British intelligence officer in wartime India. In Calcutta in 1942, he interviewed three emaciated men, who claimed to have escaped from Siberia.

Mayne always believed their story was the same as that of The Long Walk - but telling the story years later, he could not remember their names. So the possibility remains that someone - if not Rawicz - achieved this extraordinary feat."

Whatever the case, the story Rawicz communicates possesses a majesty and power that can only belong to the annals of Truth.

The long walk is one hell of an adventure. It is well written and is difficult to put down once you start to read it. I am sceptical whether it is true. Walking across the Kobi desert with no food or water is a bit difficult to believe. I think a bit more research needs to be done to vouch for the veracity of this story. Whether the book is fact or fiction it is still a very interesting story to read.