An exciting read but what is the truth?

It has been a busy week. Three classes at the gym this week. A business appointment in town with Mr P. Then a photo club meeting we habe had council workers of Hobart continue]ing to decorate our road out in front of our house for about the 7th week with their Stop/Slow signs.

The weather was so bad the other day we felt sorry for them and brought them big packets of biscuits. Mr. P has brought them doughnuts. They are almost like family. Our rates $ at work I guess with a whole new storm water system underground and now new paving on the road. 

But back to a book-

I am reading a captivating book. I should say I am listening to it. A non fiction book called The Long Walk:  The True Story of a Trek to Freedom by Slavomir Rawicz. Narrated by John Lee and he does a brilliant job. 

What’s it about? This is the blurb. 

””Slavomir Rawicz was a young Polish cavalry officer. On 19 November 1939 he was arrested by the Russians and after brutal interrogation he was sentenced to twenty-five years in a gulag.

After a three-month journey in the dead of winter to Siberia, life in a Soviet labour camp meant enduring hunger, extreme cold, untreated wounds and illnesses and facing the daily risk of arbitrary execution. Realising that to remain meant almost certain death, Rawicz, along with six companions, escaped. In June 1941, they crossed the trans-Siberian railway and headed south, climbing into Tibet and freedom in British India nine months later, in March 1942, having travelled over four thousand miles on foot through some of the harshest regions in the world, including the Gobi Desert, Tibet and the Himalayas.’

This is the kind of book that has you on the edge of your seat. I can’t even begin to imagine what this would be like.

Then six of them escape successfully. The book tells the story of how they did it. They even save a 17 year old girl who joins them on this trek and becomes very important to them. She was in dire straits herself so lucky to be taken in by these men. 

The book is told in the first person so it feels like I am sitting with the author hearing a riveting story.

Photo of Slavomir

I’m really enjoying this book. Every evening this week I am waiting to see what happens to them next. Then I go to Good Reads to mark it down as being read in my list of books and I come across this!

Wikipedia addition

“In 2006, the BBC released a report based on former Soviet records, including statements written by Rawicz himself, showing that Rawicz had been released as part of the 1942 general amnesty of Poles in the USSR and subsequently transported across the Caspian Sea to a refugee camp in Iran, leading the report to conclude that his supposed escape to India never occurred.^[1]

In May 2009, Witold Gliński, a Polish World War II veteran living in the UK, came forward to claim that the story of Rawicz was true, but was actually an account of what happened to him, not Rawicz. Gliński’s claims have been severely questioned by various sources.^[2][3] The son of Rupert Mayne, a British intelligence officer in wartime India, stated that in 1942, in Calcutta, his father had interviewed three emaciated men who claimed to have escaped from Siberia. According to his son, Mayne always believed that their story was the same as that of The Long Walk—but telling the story decades later, his son could not remember their names or any details. Subsequent research failed to unearth confirmatory evidence for the story.^[4]

I understand there is also a film by Peter Weir-2010 called The Way Back. I don’t know if I will look this up. Hollywood can really ruin a good book but you never know. It has a good cast.

So now I have no idea what the truth is. Whatever the circumstances of this book I am not going to spend time researching it all. It is just a very “good read” as Harriett Gillbert would say.

Speaking of Harriett Gilbert (I am going to digress here a minute)…

She has recorded a podcast through BBC Radio 4 since 2011. It was called Books and Authors but is now entitled A Good Read. Each week she spends about 30 minutes with two guests. They come from all walks of British life. The three of them each pick what they think is A Good Read. Then all three of them read each book. The podcast is the discussion between each of them for about 10 minutes of so of what they thought of the book. I just love this podcast. They often agree but then when they don’t it is even. More fun. I certainly recommend this if you’re into podcasts.

I will continue with reading this book and just enjoy it for what it is. I just enjoy my evenings working on puzzles or my journals while I listen to yet another really good tale.

Until the next time….