The Escape Artist

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20.99

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEAR
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2023 RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 WINGATE LITERARY PRIZE

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

A MAIL ON SUNDAY, THE TIMES, THE ECONOMIST, GUARDIAN, THE SPECTATOR, TIME, AND DAILY EXPRESS/DAILY MIRROR BOOK OF THE YEAR

‘Thrilling’ Daily Mail
‘Gripping’ Guardian
‘Heartwrenching’ Yuval Noah Harari
‘Magnificent’ Philip Pullman
‘Excellent’ Sunday Times
‘Inspiring’ Daily Mail
‘An immediate classic’ Antony Beevor
‘Awe inspiring’ Simon Sebag Montefiore
‘Shattering’ Simon Schama
‘Utterly compelling’ Philippe Sands
‘A must-read’ Emily Maitlis
‘Indispensable’ Howard Jacobson

Anne Frank. Primo Levi. Oskar Schindler . . . Rudolf Vrba.

In April 1944 nineteen-year-old Rudolf Vrba and fellow inmate Fred Wetzler became two of the very first Jews ever known to break out of Auschwitz. Under electrified fences and past armed watchtowers, evading thousands of SS men and slavering dogs, they trekked across marshlands, mountains and rivers to freedom. Vrba’s mission: to reveal to the world the truth of the Holocaust.

In the death factory of Auschwitz, Vrba had become an eyewitness to almost every chilling stage of the Nazis’ process of industrialised murder. The more he saw, the more determined he became to warn the Jews of Europe what fate awaited them. A brilliant student of science and mathematics, he committed each detail to memory, risking everything to collect the first data of the Final Solution. After his escape, that information would form a priceless thirty-two-page report that would reach Roosevelt, Churchill and the pope and eventually save over 200,000 lives.

But the escape from Auschwitz was not his last. After the war, he kept running – from his past, from his home country, from his adopted country, even from his own name. Few knew of the truly extraordinary deed he had done.

Now, at last, Rudolf Vrba’s heroism can be known – and he can take his place alongside those whose stories define history’s darkest chapter.

ISBN: 9781529369052

Out of stock

In April 1944 a teenager named Rudolf Vrba was planning a daring and unprecedented escape from Auschwitz. After hiding in a pile of timber planks for three days while 3,000 SS men and their bloodhounds searched for him, Vrba and his fellow escapee Fred Wetzler would eventually cross Nazi-occupied Poland on foot, as penniless fugitives. Their mission: to tell the world the truth of the Final Solution. A thrilling history with enormous historical implications, ‘The Escape Artist’ is the extraordinary story of a complex man who would seek escape again and again: first from Auschwitz, then from his past, even from his own name.

Additional information

Weight0.52 kg
Dimensions23.2 × 15.2 × 3.2 cm
Author

Publisher

Imprint

Cover

Paperback

Pages

400

Language

English

Edition

Export ed

Dewey

940.5318092 (edition:23)

Readership

General – Trade / Code: K

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