Slavomir Rawicz’s ‘The Long Walk: The true story of a trek to freedom’ was anything but, it seems.
So why do Audible and Amazon still sell it as non-fiction?
I just finished listening to this book, via my ‘2 titles a month’ account with www.audible.co.uk. I have to say, I quite enjoyed it (heroic second world war Russian gulag escape romp) up to a point. The point being the party’s encounter with a pair of 8 foot tall Yetis. Hmm, I thought. I bought this thinking (not unreasonably, given the title and the marketing puff) it was a ‘true’ story.
Wrong. The tiniest bit of online research demonstrates quite clearly that it’s credentials are, to put it midly, shaky. No corroborating evidence; no trace of the others in the party, no historical records except those which contradict the story entirely. Ah.
Ok, so I wasted £10. But at least I got a chance to review it on Audible (let’s see if they publish my comment!).
The process of research was interesting. Why? Because it took only a couple of minutes to surface the controversy over this book – a debate that’s nearly 60 years old. The first clear indication was, of course, good old Wikipedia. The second was the huge number of reviews on Amazon.com. Note the number of reviewers who found it inspiring (and want to believe in it). Note also the clarity of the critics’ arguments. You can see that some of the critical reviews come from as early (in internet terms) as 2002.
All of which makes the Guardian’s 2004 obituary for Slavomir Rawicz seem mildy amusing – and makes the journalist involved look faintly ridiculous. Alright, so in 2004 Wikipedia wasn’t up to much (started in 2001) but c’mon? You’re a journalist for God’s sake.
If you’ve arrived here after reading the book (which is more likely) all I can say is ‘Yep, you’re right. It was too good to be true’ and ‘Come on, Audible and Amazon, you need to put a virtual sticker on the front of this one’ or else people will be asking for their money back.
“Truth” said someone a little while back “is information about which there is no serious dispute”.
