Orient Express

Greene’s “sharply, often incisively etched” novel of the interlocked fates of unwary strangers on a train from Belgium to Constantinople ( The New York Times ). The Orient Express has embarked from Ostend for a three-day journey to Cologne, Vienna, and Constantinople. The passenger list includes a Jewish trader from London with business interests in Turkey—and a score to settle; a vulnerable chorus girl on her last legs; a boozy and spiteful journalist who’s found an unrequited love in her paid companion, and her latest scoop in second class—a Serbian dissident in disguise on his way to lead a revolution; and a murderer on the run looking for a getaway. As the train hurtles across Europe, the fates of everyone on board will collide long before the Orient Express rushes headlong to its final destination. Originally published in the UK as Stamboul Train in 1932, Graham Greene’s “novel has movement, variety, interest; taken on the surface, it is an interesting and entertaining story of adventure, penetrated through and through with the consciousness of the on-rushing train, with that curious sense of the temporary suspension of one’s ordinary existence which comes to many on ship or train” ( The New York Times ).