Trail of Hope (by Norman Davies)

(Originally posted on Friday, 30 December 2016)

My rating: 10/10

So far I have never reviewed a book that I had not finished reading yet. This time I make an exception, but there is nothing wrong with Trail of Hope by Norman Davies. On the contrary this is the ultimate praise for the book – I can't simply wait to review it! It is AWESOME!

Even though I had read about the Anders Army before I still learned LOTS of interesting things from the book. Most importantly, however, the book is not only about the army, but about tales of soldiers and civilians who got trapped in the Soviet Union and who were able to escape their imprisonment thanks to the creation and the movements of the army. Well, not all of them succeeded in escaping – many Poles died from exhaustion before they crossed the border.

The book is a true “road book”. This particular road's length was extreme – over 12,000 kilometres. Obviously not every person travelled to its end – many civilians settled on the way or went to different, even more exotic destinations like India, Australia, New Zealand, southern Africa or South America. Among such refugees were lots of young children who lost their parents in the Soviet Union.

The book is HUGE! Literally. Please take a look:

When you hold this book in your hands you can feel your money's worth. There are lots of photos and the paper is of fine quality throughout the book.

Some people call it a “photo album” rather than a book, but I totally disagree. Yes, there are lots of photos, but the text is still superior to the photos, both in quantity and considering the “fun factor”.

There are almost 600 pages, so it's hard to describe the “plot”. For this very reason I decided to simply show you some pages of the book. Enjoy! And buy the book!