The Long Walk

“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

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.