To Ruhleben -- And Back

Rating:
Summary: A Smart Cliffhanger
Review: I wasn't sure what to expect when I got "To Ruhleben and Back," but this memoir was a strange and wonderful surprise: English college kid sneaks into wartime (1914) Berlin as a journalist on a dare, gets in way over his head, is thrown into a prison camp, and then escapes with a fellow inmate in broad daylight to run, hide, and bluff their way across Germany to freedom. It's a really engrossing, old fashioned page turner. It's not a war book at all, more like a weird survival odyssey with a total wiseass: at one point he even poses as a sort of folk singer, probably not your usual POW escape plan. Great stuff.