THE INSTANT SUNDAY LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE

The Sunday Times Bestseller

‘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 the first Jews ever 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.

Excellent . . . thrilling . . . Freedland’s book is rich in the kind of details that haunt you long after you have turned the last page

A brilliant and heart-wrenching book, with universal and timely lessons about the power of information – and misinformation

A magnificent book. I could scarcely breathe at some points. What a tribute to its extraordinary hero, and it’s such an important and necessary story to read . . . I can’t praise it too highly. What an achievement

An immediate classic of Holocaust literature. Superbly researched and written, it is both a gripping story and deeply moving, I literally could not put it down

Immersive, shattering, and, ultimately redemptive book . . . An epic of terror and endurance . . . Written with Freedland’s page-turning, gripping, hard-edged immediacy, The Escape Artist is profound in thought, boundless in humanity, an immediate modern classic

Awe inspiring, exciting and poignant, this is a thrilling read, a piece of redemptive storytelling and a work of important Holocaust historical research: Freedland has given Rudolf Vrba his rightful place in history – and in the process written a book that I couldn’t put down

The Escape Artist is marvellous. It is original, meticulous and utterly compelling – and ultimately a deeply tragic tale

A must-read stand out piece of history . . . This is Freedland at his finest . . . It is both a celebration of the extraordinary will, courage and resilience of the hero – Rudi Vrba – and an all too prescient warning of how hard it is to wake up the world to things it would prefer not to see