Slavomir Rawicz "The Long Walk" Signed Limited Edition w/COA, Leather-Bound [Sealed]

"I hope The Long Walk (The True Story of a Trek to Freedom) will remain as a memorial to all those who live and die for freedom, and for all those who for many reasons could not speak for themselves."--Slavomir Rawicz

Personally signed by Słavomir Rawicz on a special page.

Easton Press, Norwalk, CT. Słavomir Rawicz "The Long Walk" Signed Limited Edition. Personally signed by the author. A luxurious leather bound collectible for your library. As New, sealed without any flaws. 

"The Long Walk is a book that I absolutely could not put down and one that I will never forget..." --Stephen Ambrose

"A poet with steel in his soul." --New York Times

Cavalry officer Slavomir Rawicz was captured by the Red Army in 1939 during the German-Soviet partition of Poland and was sent to the Siberian Gulag along with other captive Poles, Finns, Ukranians, Czechs, Greeks, and even a few English, French, and American unfortunates who had been caught up in the fighting. A year later, he and six comrades from various countries escaped from a labor camp in Yakutsk and made their way, on foot, thousands of miles south to British India, where Rawicz reenlisted in the Polish army and fought against the Germans. The Long Walk recounts that adventure, which is surely one of the most curious treks in history.

The Long Walk

In 1941, the author and six other fellow prisoners escaped a Soviet labor camp in Yakutsk—a camp where enduring hunger, cold, untended wounds, untreated illnesses, and avoiding daily executions were
everyday feats. Their march over thousands of miles by foot—out of Siberia and through China, the Gobi Desert, Tibet, and over the Himalayas to British India—was a remarkable journey through some of the most inhospitable conditions on the face of the earth.

Written in a hauntingly detailed, no-holds-barred way, the book inspired the forthcoming Peter Weir film The Way Back, starring Colin Farrell, Jim Sturges, and Ed Harris. Previous editions have sold hundreds of thousands of copies; this edition includes an afterword written by the author soon before his death, as well as the author’s introduction to the book’s Polish edition. Guaranteed to forever stay in the reader’s mind, it will remain a testament to the strength of the human spirit, and the universal desire for freedom and dignity.

The text of the book The Long Walk was written by Ronald Downing based on conversations with Rawicz. The book The Long Walk was released in the UK in 1956. It has sold over half a million copies and has been translated into 25 languages. The book has been inspirational for many explorers, including Benedict Allen and Cyril Delafosse-Guiramand.

Features

Includes all the classic Easton Press qualities:

* Premium Leather
* Silk Moire Endleaves
* Distinctive Cover Design
* Hubbed Spine, Accented in Real 22KT Gold
* Satin Ribbon Page Marker
* Gilded Page Edges
* Long-lasting, High Quality Acid-neutral Paper
* Smyth-sewn Pages for Strength and Durability
* Beautiful Illustrations

About the Author

Sławomir Rawicz (1 September 1915 – 5 April 2004) was a Polish Army lieutenant who was imprisoned by the NKVD after the German-Soviet invasion of Poland. In a ghost-written book called The Long Walk, he claimed that in 1941 he and six others had escaped from a Siberian Gulag camp and begun a long journey south on foot (about 6,500 km or 4,000 mi), supposedly travelling through the Gobi Desert, Tibet, and the Himalayas before finally reaching British India in the winter of 1942.

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.

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. 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 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.