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 enlarge | Author: Slavomir Rawicz
Publisher: The Lyons Press
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy Used: $2.77
You Save: $12.18 (81%)
New (17) Used (54) Collectible (2) from $2.77
Avg. Customer Rating:  306 reviews
Sales Rank: 48050
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.7
ISBN: 1558216847
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.5472470957
EAN: 9781558216846
ASIN: 1558216847
Publication Date: December 1, 1997
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Makes you grateful for the simple things in life..... December 20, 2008
....like food, and warmth, and shelter. Read this when you're feeling low and it'll put your life in perspective.
Also, it might make you take "Have vacation in the Gobi Desert" off your life to-do list, if it's on there!
The Great Escape December 10, 2008
I've given this book 5 stars not because I regard the story as totally true but because it is entertaining. I don't know whether the author did any of these things or not but a Rhodesian friend told me that the author is a cook in London and was never in the Gulag. Me, I simply don't know. I do know, however, that the story is a terrific yarn even if some of the details strain credulity. The ordeals thru snows, deserts and over the Himalayas to India don't seem literally possible.
Like another reviewer I am an outdoorsman and it's difficult to understand how weakened bodies could tolerate 25% of these things. By the way, I've spent some time in the Gobi and never saw anything like the plague of snakes the author describes. As a matter of fact, although I saw abundant wildlife, I never spotted a snake despite the fact that the weather was perfect for them.
Another reviewer has compared this story...unfavorably...with the 'true' story of the Shakelton expedition told in the page-turner, 'Endurance'. I'm even skeptical of some of the 'Endurance' details. Shakelton's men supposedly survived weeks on the Anarctic ice sleeping in constantly wet sleeping bags. Iron men and wooden ships. I think I would have died miserably in only one night in a wet sleeping bag during a blue-cold Antarctic night.
Ron Braithwaite, author of novels, 'Skull Rack' and 'Hummingbird God'--on the Spanish Conquest of Mexico
 an epic adventure story, not a factual field report December 6, 2008
This adventure/survival story has parallels to PAPILLION (please see my review) as far as the limits of credibility goes. But that certainly does not invalidate it as far as what it is - a story and not a factual report. All the likely embellishments notwithstanding, it is a fascinating tale of human endurance and fortitude.
All this debate about true/not true is fine on one level, the level of facticity. On a deeper level, it is the telling of a journey, an epic struggle to survive against almost impossible odds. What we are presented with is the veracity of improbable episodes vs. the telling of a reconstructed story that the author freely admits several times in the book of having memory lapses and a grasp of time & space that were altered by the extreme deprivations he suffered through.
That this narrative was midwifed into existence by a British journalist who stood to gain by it by the author's sighting of a pair of Yetis certainly does shed a suspect light upon the enterprise. It is towards the end of this long walk when the author reports seeing a pair of strange ape-like creatures that did not shy away from him and his companions. So, by that chance happening, this book came into existence.
As many of the previous reviewers have indicated, this is a book to enjoy as an adventure story. All the debate about whether it did or did not happen is really secondary to a pretty decent read.
Parataxis
The Cloud Reckoner
Extracts: A Field Guide for Iconoclasts
 Science says false but still a good read December 4, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Talk to any medical personnel about the length of time they spent without water in the Gobi desert and they will tell you it is physically impossible for even half the time described in the book. This fabrication along with the spotting of the abominable snowmen makes me think the book is longer on fiction than fact, although the premise may be absolutely true.
It was still an enjoyable read if inconsistent with reality.
Endurance in another sense November 25, 2008
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.
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