Raw and gripping.

Riveting.

Compelling.

Freedland’s superb writ­ing simul­ta­ne­ous­ly explores these ques­tions and fills the read­er with rage, despair, and admi­ra­tion for the stub­born resis­tance of the human spir­it. It is heart-wrench­ing to read the sto­ry.

Gripping, compelling, shocking and deeply moving..

Much of this is interesting, but at the heart of The Escape Artist is an utterly gripping narrative, incorporating a restrained though harrowing picture of life in Auschwitz and a kind of heroic adventure story..

Astonishing.

Drawing on Vrba’s memoirs, and on conversations with his first wife and his widow, Jonathan Freedland has put together both the story of Vrba’s two years in Auschwitz and – perhaps most interestingly – the long saga of the aftermath of his escape. It is written almost as fiction and moves at a great pace.

Freedland’s excellent book opens in the most thrilling way imaginable.

Freedland enthusiastically makes his informal retelling of this story of a daring escape from a horror on an unimaginable scale a particular tale of high adventure..

Historically significant and riveting.

Freedland...is the perfect person to tell Rosenberg’s story: he’s got a journalist’s eye for precise detail and a novelist’s sense of pacing and suspense.

There are two minor weaknesses in Freedland’s otherwise compelling and vivid account. First, Freedland skates over Vrba’s falling out with Wetzler. Given the intimate relationship of their camp existence, escape and tour to spur the Jews and Allies to action, their subsequent estrangement feels abrupt and calls out for a more detailed explanation.

First-rate.

Harrowing.