AS FAR AS MY FEET WILL CARRY ME

A German soldier's escape from a Siberian lead mine is also a prolonged, agonizing description of the years leading up to the final flight- years lived underground, without any variation to the daily round of labor and hunger. The food supplies and equipment were given to Forell (so he is called here) by a physician who was a fellow convict and remained behind because he was dying of cancer. The three years journeying to Iran, fending off ice, starvation and the onslaught of wolves; the Armenian Jew and the reindeer herdsmen who helped Forell; the criminale he fell in with; the glib lies he mustered when trapped-all this makes up a narrative which is exacting and pitiless or perhaps one would not credit it. As it stands, it is a numbing, frightening record which many readers will not care to endure.