I really enjoyed this one. I'd actually give it a 4.5 stars, but doesn't quite push a 5 for me. What an amazing story of hardship and survival. At the end, I found that I wanted to know more about the ones who survived... what happened to each of them? did they ever come back together? It's hard to imagine going through something that intense with someone or a group of people and then simply going your separate ways. ( )

Three star fiction, minus one for claiming to be true.

> The length of chain dragging in the snow at the end of each section of prisoners told the tale of the men who had fallen out on the way. At each death the men behind the vacant space were moved up and the varying lengths of spare chain were an indication of the casualty rate in each group.

> What were they? For years they remained a mystery to me, but since recently I have read of scientific expeditions to discover the Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas and studied descriptions of the creature given by native hillmen, I believe that on that day we may have encountered two of the animals. I do insist, however, that recent estimates of their height as about five feet must be wrong. The minimum height of a well-grown specimen must be around seven feet.

> The bus pulled away towards the transit camp where I was to await a troopship for the Middle East. I looked back at him once and he waved. I felt suddenly bereft of friends, bereft of everything, as desolate and lonely as a man could be. ( )

I completely changed my mind about this book once it was almost certainly proven to be sheer fabrication (do your research). I guess it always had a dubious reputation. The book just doesn't have any particular literary merit aside from the almost unbelievable, er, I mean, plain unbelievable story of human endurance.

I moved from non-fiction to fiction shelf.

Read The Worst Journey In The World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard if you want to see a true story of the limits of human endurance. ( )

I cannot imagine having the strength to go through what Slav and the others went through to reach freedom. The will to survive always shocks me. What people are willing to endure, how they can push themselves beyond what would be considered humanly possible is what makes this book an amazing read. ( )

Slavomir relates how he was imprisoned in Russia just before the start of World War II. He was originally from Poland and the Russians captured him and accused him of spying. He was sent to Siberia, which in itself was a remarkable journey that at one point involved sleds pulled by reindeer. At the prison camp (where the prisoners had to build their own barracks) he starts to formulate a plan of escape. He is even encouraged and helped by the wife of the head of the prison. He finds some allies - which included a mysterious American named Mr. Smith - and they start preparations and eventually make good on their plan. Then they go through many hardships to walk out of Siberia, through Mongolia, and eventually all the way to India.
This was a fairly engaging story, but it parts of it seem very far fetched. The descriptions are very vivid and the author has a sort of old fashioned way of speaking that I enjoyed but that may take some getting used to. Fans of survival against all odds stories might like this one. ( )