Orient Express

Orient Express

<b>Greene’s “sharply, often incisively etched” novel of the interlocked fates of unwary strangers on a train from Belgium to Constantinople (<i>The New York Times</i>).</b><br />  <br /> 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.<br />  <br /> Originally published in the UK as <i>Stamboul Train</i> 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” (<i>The New York Times</i>).<br />