“The Long Walk” is the first-person story of Slavomir Rawicz, a Pole who is imprisoned in Siberia by the Russians, escapes, and treks thousands of miles through some of the harshest conditions on earth. It’s an amazing story of survival. The book was published in 1956, and has since been published in a couple dozen languages.

The story begins in 1939, when Rawicz is arrested by the Russians, who suspect him of being a spy. As an officer in the Polish army, he had already been wounded in combat against the invading Germans. His only crime against Russia was living too close to the border.

The “long walk” doesn’t actually begin until page 93, and those 93 pages may be the most gripping part of the book.

• For months on end, Rawicz is brutally interrogated and tortured in Russian prisons.
• He is finally sentenced to prison in Siberia after a show-trial at the Lubyanka prison.
• For weeks, he travels to Siberia squeezed into a railroad car with hundreds of other prisoners. Many die as they travel deep into Siberia.
• Near Lake Baikal, around 4000 prisoners are handcuffed to long chains dragged behind trucks, and they spend weeks marching to the remote camp. Many more die.
• The living conditions in the camp, the work details–we see the worst of the Soviet system.
• We come to understand the desolation of Siberia, and why it should be feared.

Rawicz spearheads an escape, meticulously planned, with six other prisoners joining him–including an American who had come to Moscow to help build the subway system and been accused of spying. Most of the prisoners, in one way or another, had been convicted of spying by the paranoid Stalinist regime.

Camp 303 is located near Yakutsk, deep in Siberia. They decide that the safest way to freedom–though not the shortest–is to head south to British-controlled India. The trip takes a year, starting in March 1941. And they cover it all on foot, usually with little food or water, yet ever pushing onward.

About half the distance merely gets them out of Siberia. Along the way, they come across a Polish young woman who had recently escaped from a labor camp. She joins their party.

Eight people enter Mongolia, but only four make it to India. In Mongolia, they cross the dreaded Gobi Desert. They enter into China, then cross the Himalayas through Tibet during the dead of winter. Finally, they encounter some British soldiers–and freedom, at last–in India.

Rawicz tells the story with the eye of a travel reporter. Some of the most interested passages  involve the hospitality of villagers and shepherds in Mongolia, China, and Tibet. They never encounter persons who would do them harm, only persons who take them in, give them shelter, feed them, and stock them with provisions for the next part of their journey.

This “story of survival” resembles, to an extent, “Endurance,” the story of the ill-fated 1914 Ernest Shackleton expedition which spent a year stranded in Antarctica. In that book, which I read several years ago, nothing particularly dramatic happened. Yet it was a riveting story of perseverance, of the human spirit refusing to give up.

Andrew Vachss writes roman noir, in which the protagonists are criminals. Think of movies like “Bonnie & Clyde,” “Pulp Fiction,” “Last Man Standing,” and “Payback.” Or the books of Jim Thompson.

“Shella” is told in first-person by a young contract killer. We never learn his name. He kills with his hands, never with firearms. After serving several years in prison, he emerges in search of his sometime-prostitute girlfriend, whom he calls Shella. The search takes him across the midwest, to bars and pool halls and dance clubs, and into the arms of a white supremacist group bent on inciting a race war. There are no good citizens, nobody with socially redeeming qualities. It’s a dark book, told by a sociopath. Yet I liked it.

“The Getaway Man” is also told in first-person, this time by Eddie, a simple-minded young man who knows cars, and knows driving. The books tells his story, from teenagerism on. He teams up with various robbers, and does stints in prison. Finally, in prison, he catches the attention of J.C., who plans out heists meticulously. A good share of the book involves planning for one last major theft of an armored car. A very good surprise ending, which you don’t grasp until the last four words.

“The Getaway Man” isn’t nearly as dark as “Shella,” and Eddie is a more fully-drawn and interesting character. He is, in many ways, a very innocent, naive fellow. The protagonist in “Shella” is similar in ways, seemingly a bit dim-witted, but also an unfeeling killer (like Dexter, in Jeff Lindsay’s books). I liked “The Getaway Man” better.

Finally, “Hard Candy,” the 4th of the 18 Burke novels by Vachss. These novels are set in New York City, I believe, and they’ve got a very distinct feel. Burke and his fascinating assortment of friends live on the criminal side of the Citizen/Criminal line, but are mostly just trying to get by. Someone described these novels as “urban survival.” Roman noir stuff all the way. 

I’m interested in the Burke novels, and not. He writes in a somewhat cryptic way, so that sometimes you’re not sure what has just happened. The characters tend to be very sexually charged, though his writing isn’t sexually graphic; however, I could do without that. This 4th novel continually referred to events in the first three books, which I haven’t read. So if I’m going to read this series, I need to start at The Beginning. But I’m not sure if I want to start. But don’t get me wrong–these are interesting, unique books. I’ve not seen anything like Burke.