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Orientexpress
As the Orient Express hurtles across Europe on its three-day journey from Ostend to Constantinople, the driven lives of several of its passengers become bound together in a fateful interlock. The menagerie of characters include Coral Musker, a beautiful chorus girl; Carleton Myatt, a rich Jewish businessman; Richard John, a mysterious and kind doctor returning to his native Belgrade; the spiteful journalist Mabel Warren; and Josef Grunlich, a cunning, murderous burglar.What happens to these strangers as they put on and take off their masks of identity and passion, all the while confessing, prevaricating, and reaching out to one another in the "veracious air" of the onrushing train, makes for one of Graham Greene's most exciting and suspenseful stories. Originally published in 1933, Orient Express was Greene's first major success. This Graham Greene Centennial Edition features a new introductory essay by Christopher Hitchens.
200 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1932
1657 people are currently reading
5728 people want to read
About the author
Graham Greene
803 books6,151 followersHenry Graham Greene was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading novelists of the 20th century.
Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels, and of thrillers (or "entertainments" as he termed them). He was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times. Through 67 years of writing, which included over 25 novels, he explored the conflicting moral and political issues of the modern world. The Power and the Glory won the 1941 Hawthornden Prize and The Heart of the Matter won the 1948 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Best of the James Tait Black. Greene was awarded the 1968 Shakespeare Prize and the 1981 Jerusalem Prize. Several of his stories have been filmed, some more than once, and he collaborated with filmmaker Carol Reed on The Fallen Idol (1948) and The Third Man (1949).
He converted to Catholicism in 1926 after meeting his future wife, Vivienne Dayrell-Browning. Later in life he took to calling himself a "Catholic agnostic". He died in 1991, aged 86, of leukemia, and was buried in Corseaux cemetery in Switzerland. William Golding called Greene "the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man's consciousness and anxiety".
Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels, and of thrillers (or "entertainments" as he termed them). He was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times. Through 67 years of writing, which included over 25 novels, he explored the conflicting moral and political issues of the modern world. The Power and the Glory won the 1941 Hawthornden Prize and The Heart of the Matter won the 1948 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Best of the James Tait Black. Greene was awarded the 1968 Shakespeare Prize and the 1981 Jerusalem Prize. Several of his stories have been filmed, some more than once, and he collaborated with filmmaker Carol Reed on The Fallen Idol (1948) and The Third Man (1949).
He converted to Catholicism in 1926 after meeting his future wife, Vivienne Dayrell-Browning. Later in life he took to calling himself a "Catholic agnostic". He died in 1991, aged 86, of leukemia, and was buried in Corseaux cemetery in Switzerland. William Golding called Greene "the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man's consciousness and anxiety".
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 765 reviews
March 5, 2018
I like Greene, I liked that the book was entertaining, social commentary and political all at the same time, a hallmark of Greene novels. What I didn't like and what really upset me, is the marking out of someone as Jewish. Rant follows! If you are not Christian, not White or not able-bodied you might well identify with it.
I have no idea if anyone else in the story, in many, many stories, newspaper articles, tv reportage, online news sites, are Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist or White. But Jews, Jews have to be identified. Especially if they are in finance, although in Greene's story, he wasn't. Bankers and other financiers who are not Jewish are not identified by their religion, only Jews. Are there more Jews in banking than any other industry? No. In London there is a joke that on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, you can't catch a taxi. Who would think of mentioning that a taxi driver was Jewish?
It isn't necessarily anti-Semitism in any shape of form, but something of the Nazi doctrine remains (yes, I know it dates back to Roman times but this is the 21stC and we know about genetics now) that Jews, whether they are from Zimbabwe, Eastern Europe or Malaysia are all really one race and no one should forget that and all that the writer wants to imply (usually negative stuff).
That's some baggage there for all of us born Jewish whatever religion or philosophy we actually espouse.
It is no longer considered polite or politically-correct to point out that some woman is actually a transgendered pre-op male. ie. A man. We have to rightfully consider not only their feelings but that (unless you are going to sleep with them) it really doesn't matter anyway. But somehow being Jewish does.
Why is Catholic not important? Why is Anglican not important? Why is atheist not important? Why is Black important? Why does my mixed race son who looks White have to have it pointed out in articles that he is Black, and Jewish, do people think he might pass as a White Christian which is somehow wrong, somehow fooling people if it wasn't pointed out?
I have no idea if anyone else in the story, in many, many stories, newspaper articles, tv reportage, online news sites, are Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist or White. But Jews, Jews have to be identified. Especially if they are in finance, although in Greene's story, he wasn't. Bankers and other financiers who are not Jewish are not identified by their religion, only Jews. Are there more Jews in banking than any other industry? No. In London there is a joke that on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, you can't catch a taxi. Who would think of mentioning that a taxi driver was Jewish?
It isn't necessarily anti-Semitism in any shape of form, but something of the Nazi doctrine remains (yes, I know it dates back to Roman times but this is the 21stC and we know about genetics now) that Jews, whether they are from Zimbabwe, Eastern Europe or Malaysia are all really one race and no one should forget that and all that the writer wants to imply (usually negative stuff).
That's some baggage there for all of us born Jewish whatever religion or philosophy we actually espouse.
It is no longer considered polite or politically-correct to point out that some woman is actually a transgendered pre-op male. ie. A man. We have to rightfully consider not only their feelings but that (unless you are going to sleep with them) it really doesn't matter anyway. But somehow being Jewish does.
Why is Catholic not important? Why is Anglican not important? Why is atheist not important? Why is Black important? Why does my mixed race son who looks White have to have it pointed out in articles that he is Black, and Jewish, do people think he might pass as a White Christian which is somehow wrong, somehow fooling people if it wasn't pointed out?
October 1, 2024
Orient Express is another wonderful classic by Graham Greene first published as Stamboul Train until the title changed when it was published in the United States as the Orient Express. It details the journey on a train from Ostend to Constantinople, later known as Istanbul. I have long had a fascination and love for trains from the time I was a small child sitting with my grandfather on many afternoons at a train station enthralled with all of the activity as he told me stories of his time with the railroad. I boarded my first train on a journey alone at age nine. My experiences on that memorable trip still remains as one of my most vivid and favorite memories.
A classic this book is, and it should be. It was riveting literature from beginning to end. This wonderful novel where we meet a lot of diverse characters traveling for very different motivations and purposes as their lives become intertwined over the course of their journey in many unpredictable ways. There is a sense of unease throughout the book that keeps you on edge. I will continue to work my way through the works of Graham Greene. And this underlying theme of anxiety is foreshadowed in the beautiful and lyrical epigraph:
"All down the restaurant-cars fell the sudden concerted silence which is said to mean that an angel passes overhead. But through the human silence the tumblers tingled on the table, the wheels thudded along the iron track, the windows shook and sparks flickered like match heads through the darkness."
A classic this book is, and it should be. It was riveting literature from beginning to end. This wonderful novel where we meet a lot of diverse characters traveling for very different motivations and purposes as their lives become intertwined over the course of their journey in many unpredictable ways. There is a sense of unease throughout the book that keeps you on edge. I will continue to work my way through the works of Graham Greene. And this underlying theme of anxiety is foreshadowed in the beautiful and lyrical epigraph:
"Everything is lyrical in its ideal existence; tragic in its fate and comic in its existence."--- GEORGE SANTAYANA
"All down the restaurant-cars fell the sudden concerted silence which is said to mean that an angel passes overhead. But through the human silence the tumblers tingled on the table, the wheels thudded along the iron track, the windows shook and sparks flickered like match heads through the darkness."
November 11, 2023
Blatantly anti-Semitic
As usual for Graham Greene this is well written with well drawn characters travelling on the Orient Express from Ostend to Istanbul with various stops between. There isn't much plot, more a series of interconnected vignettes. Interesting characters, some quite unpleasant. Unfortunately it is blatantly anti-Semitic which ruined the whole thing for me. It does no good to note that many people were anti-Semitic between the wars. Many were not. Of those who were, Adolf Hitler comes to mind.
As usual for Graham Greene this is well written with well drawn characters travelling on the Orient Express from Ostend to Istanbul with various stops between. There isn't much plot, more a series of interconnected vignettes. Interesting characters, some quite unpleasant. Unfortunately it is blatantly anti-Semitic which ruined the whole thing for me. It does no good to note that many people were anti-Semitic between the wars. Many were not. Of those who were, Adolf Hitler comes to mind.
April 10, 2017
[9/10]
Richard John, with his mackintosh turned up above his ears, leant from the corridor window and saw the sheds begin to move backwards towards the slow wash of the sea. It was the end, he thought, and the beginning. Faces streamed away. A man with a pickaxe on his shoulder swung a red lamp; the smoke from the engine blew round him and obscured his light. The brakes ground, the clouds parted, and the setting sun flashed on the line, the window and his eyes. If I could sleep, he thought with longing, I could remember more clearly all the things that have to be remembered.
Why would an author sell his own work short? ( In Stamboul Train for the first and last time in my life I deliberately set out to write a book to please, one which with luck might be made into a film. The devil looks after his own and I succeeded in both aims. ). Graham Greene considered "Stamboul Train" one of his lesser novels, a commercial 'light' thriller, but to me it reads just as good as one of his classic stories of religious or emotional distress. The same major themes of faith, love, identity, social justice, clinical depression and forgiveness of sins are present in this rolling microcosm of the larger world.
Before starting on the actual journey by luxury train from the English Channel to the sea of Marmara, two excerpts are useful to set the mood: the epigraph by George Santayana:
"Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence; tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence."
... and the preface written by Christopher Hitchens:
The essence of Greeneland, if one may dare to try and define it, is the combination of the exotic and the romantic with the sordid and the banal. Those who travel and depart, says the poet Horace, only change their skies and not their condition. The meanness of everyday existence is found at the bottom of every suitcase, and has in fact been packed along with everything else. Nonetheless, it is sometimes when they are far from home and routine that people will stir to make an unwonted exertion of the spirit or of the will.
We are all travelers through life, and this train journey imagined by Greene captures several characters at a turning point, first charmed by the romance of a new beginning, of leaving the old habits behind and hoping for a better future in that far-off, exotic point of arrival. Tragedy, disillusionment, compromise and resignation are what Fate has decreed instead.
A tender light flooded the compartments. It would have been possible for a moment to believe that the sun was the expression of something that loved and suffered for men. Human beings floated like fish in golden water, free from the urge of gravity, flying without wings, transported in a glass aquarium. Ugly faces and misshapen bodies were transmuted, if not into beauty, at least into grotesque forms fashioned by a mocking affection. On that golden tide they rose and fell, murmured and dreamed. They were not imprisoned, for they were not during the hour of dawn aware of their imprisonment.
Carleton Myatt, a young man running to fat, ostentatiously dressed, flaunting his wealth, is going to Istanbul on a business assignment. Richard John, a middle-aged doctor traveling under a false name, is returning to Belgrade to face the consequences of his earlier political actions. Q. C. Savory, a popular novelist risen from the poor quarters of London, is traveling East in search of inspiration. Mr. Opie, a clergyman, is traveling to Budapest on holiday and seems more interested in cricket than in spiritual matters. Coral Musker, a chorus girl, hopes to keep hunger and extreme poverty at bay with a new singing and dancing act in Istanbul. Boarding the train along the way are 'Dizzy' Mabel Warren, a forceful older woman reporter hunting for the ultimate scoop for her tabloid, Janet Pardoe, a beautiful society girl of ambiguous sexual preferences and Joseph Grunlich, a ruthless thief and opportunist on the run from Vienna after his latest heist ends in murder.
Each of these personages is fascinating in its own particular mannerisms and aspirations, but two developments stood out for me : a touching romance between the rich Jew boy and the chorus girl, of the sort that usually blooms on long voyages where social norms and a sense of personal obligations is momentarily suspended ( He could not help remembering that he was growing fat and that he was traveling in currants and not with a portfolio of sealed papers. Nor is she a beautiful Russian countess, but she likes me and she has a pretty figure. ), and the more momentous drama of Dr. Czinner, the dreamer who embraced Communism hoping to improve the lives of the poor workers in Belgrade, the man who ran away to England when the chief of police started a personal vendetta against him, the atheist who thirsts for faith, the lost soul in search of redemption that is the closest I can come to describe as a typical Greene hero.
He could do nothing for his own people; he could not recommend rest for the worn-out or prescribe insulin to the diabetic, because they had not the money to pay for either.
then,
He found himself praying: 'God forgive me.' But he was shut off from any assurance of forgiveness, if there existed any power which forgave. [...] The priest's face turned away, the raised fingers, the whisper of a dead tongue, seemed to him suddenly as beautiful, as infinitely desirable and as hopelessly lost as youth and first love in the corner of the viaduct wall.
also,
His lips felt dry with a literal thirst for righteousness, which was like a glass of ice-cold water on a table in another man's room.
Many readers will probably pick the half ludicrous, half tragic confrontation between Czinner and the border guards as he tries to re-enter his home country as the high point of the novel, but what I remember best right now is a conversation in a train compartment between the doctor, the clergyman and the novelist : one man painfully looking for answers, one man comfortably numb in his preconceptions and self-interest, one who sold his sensibility and talent for success. Greene touches here on similarities between psychoanalysis and confession, on literature as a tool for self discovery ('your novel is a confession only in so far as a dream is a confession'), but most of all he dwells on the inability of the church as an institution to offer a path to salvation and on the ultimately solitary, intimate struggle that every man must take on the way to Golgotha. Dr. Czinner gets no solace from Opie or from Savory, and at the end of the journey the hand that will reach out for him will be that of another lost soul . The Orient Express is revealed as one more metaphor of our journey through life:
He saw the express in which they had traveled breaking the dark sky like a rocket. They clung to it with every stratagem in their power, leaning this way and that, altering the balance now in this direction, now in that. One had to be very alive, very flexible, very opportunist. [...] His mind became confused, and soon he was falling through endless space, breathless, with a windy vacancy in head and chest, because he had been unable to retain his foothold on what was sometimes a ship, and at other times a comet, the world itself, or only a fast train from Ostend to Istanbul.
—«»—«»—«»—
"Stamboul Train" gave me more food for thought than I initially expected. It is not without flaws (mostly regarding some obvious anti-semitic passages and some 'red scare' anti-communist attitudes), but overall it was just as good as my previous forays into what Hitchens calls 'Greeneland'. As a bonus, I now want to revisit "Ship of Fools" by Katherine Anne Porter.
Richard John, with his mackintosh turned up above his ears, leant from the corridor window and saw the sheds begin to move backwards towards the slow wash of the sea. It was the end, he thought, and the beginning. Faces streamed away. A man with a pickaxe on his shoulder swung a red lamp; the smoke from the engine blew round him and obscured his light. The brakes ground, the clouds parted, and the setting sun flashed on the line, the window and his eyes. If I could sleep, he thought with longing, I could remember more clearly all the things that have to be remembered.
Why would an author sell his own work short? ( In Stamboul Train for the first and last time in my life I deliberately set out to write a book to please, one which with luck might be made into a film. The devil looks after his own and I succeeded in both aims. ). Graham Greene considered "Stamboul Train" one of his lesser novels, a commercial 'light' thriller, but to me it reads just as good as one of his classic stories of religious or emotional distress. The same major themes of faith, love, identity, social justice, clinical depression and forgiveness of sins are present in this rolling microcosm of the larger world.
Before starting on the actual journey by luxury train from the English Channel to the sea of Marmara, two excerpts are useful to set the mood: the epigraph by George Santayana:
"Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence; tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence."
... and the preface written by Christopher Hitchens:
The essence of Greeneland, if one may dare to try and define it, is the combination of the exotic and the romantic with the sordid and the banal. Those who travel and depart, says the poet Horace, only change their skies and not their condition. The meanness of everyday existence is found at the bottom of every suitcase, and has in fact been packed along with everything else. Nonetheless, it is sometimes when they are far from home and routine that people will stir to make an unwonted exertion of the spirit or of the will.
We are all travelers through life, and this train journey imagined by Greene captures several characters at a turning point, first charmed by the romance of a new beginning, of leaving the old habits behind and hoping for a better future in that far-off, exotic point of arrival. Tragedy, disillusionment, compromise and resignation are what Fate has decreed instead.
A tender light flooded the compartments. It would have been possible for a moment to believe that the sun was the expression of something that loved and suffered for men. Human beings floated like fish in golden water, free from the urge of gravity, flying without wings, transported in a glass aquarium. Ugly faces and misshapen bodies were transmuted, if not into beauty, at least into grotesque forms fashioned by a mocking affection. On that golden tide they rose and fell, murmured and dreamed. They were not imprisoned, for they were not during the hour of dawn aware of their imprisonment.
Carleton Myatt, a young man running to fat, ostentatiously dressed, flaunting his wealth, is going to Istanbul on a business assignment. Richard John, a middle-aged doctor traveling under a false name, is returning to Belgrade to face the consequences of his earlier political actions. Q. C. Savory, a popular novelist risen from the poor quarters of London, is traveling East in search of inspiration. Mr. Opie, a clergyman, is traveling to Budapest on holiday and seems more interested in cricket than in spiritual matters. Coral Musker, a chorus girl, hopes to keep hunger and extreme poverty at bay with a new singing and dancing act in Istanbul. Boarding the train along the way are 'Dizzy' Mabel Warren, a forceful older woman reporter hunting for the ultimate scoop for her tabloid, Janet Pardoe, a beautiful society girl of ambiguous sexual preferences and Joseph Grunlich, a ruthless thief and opportunist on the run from Vienna after his latest heist ends in murder.
Each of these personages is fascinating in its own particular mannerisms and aspirations, but two developments stood out for me : a touching romance between the rich Jew boy and the chorus girl, of the sort that usually blooms on long voyages where social norms and a sense of personal obligations is momentarily suspended ( He could not help remembering that he was growing fat and that he was traveling in currants and not with a portfolio of sealed papers. Nor is she a beautiful Russian countess, but she likes me and she has a pretty figure. ), and the more momentous drama of Dr. Czinner, the dreamer who embraced Communism hoping to improve the lives of the poor workers in Belgrade, the man who ran away to England when the chief of police started a personal vendetta against him, the atheist who thirsts for faith, the lost soul in search of redemption that is the closest I can come to describe as a typical Greene hero.
He could do nothing for his own people; he could not recommend rest for the worn-out or prescribe insulin to the diabetic, because they had not the money to pay for either.
then,
He found himself praying: 'God forgive me.' But he was shut off from any assurance of forgiveness, if there existed any power which forgave. [...] The priest's face turned away, the raised fingers, the whisper of a dead tongue, seemed to him suddenly as beautiful, as infinitely desirable and as hopelessly lost as youth and first love in the corner of the viaduct wall.
also,
His lips felt dry with a literal thirst for righteousness, which was like a glass of ice-cold water on a table in another man's room.
Many readers will probably pick the half ludicrous, half tragic confrontation between Czinner and the border guards as he tries to re-enter his home country as the high point of the novel, but what I remember best right now is a conversation in a train compartment between the doctor, the clergyman and the novelist : one man painfully looking for answers, one man comfortably numb in his preconceptions and self-interest, one who sold his sensibility and talent for success. Greene touches here on similarities between psychoanalysis and confession, on literature as a tool for self discovery ('your novel is a confession only in so far as a dream is a confession'), but most of all he dwells on the inability of the church as an institution to offer a path to salvation and on the ultimately solitary, intimate struggle that every man must take on the way to Golgotha. Dr. Czinner gets no solace from Opie or from Savory, and at the end of the journey the hand that will reach out for him will be that of another lost soul . The Orient Express is revealed as one more metaphor of our journey through life:
He saw the express in which they had traveled breaking the dark sky like a rocket. They clung to it with every stratagem in their power, leaning this way and that, altering the balance now in this direction, now in that. One had to be very alive, very flexible, very opportunist. [...] His mind became confused, and soon he was falling through endless space, breathless, with a windy vacancy in head and chest, because he had been unable to retain his foothold on what was sometimes a ship, and at other times a comet, the world itself, or only a fast train from Ostend to Istanbul.
—«»—«»—«»—
"Stamboul Train" gave me more food for thought than I initially expected. It is not without flaws (mostly regarding some obvious anti-semitic passages and some 'red scare' anti-communist attitudes), but overall it was just as good as my previous forays into what Hitchens calls 'Greeneland'. As a bonus, I now want to revisit "Ship of Fools" by Katherine Anne Porter.
September 20, 2025
A train departs Ostend and carries businessmen, journalists, criminals, dancers, and revolutionaries toward Istanbul on a journey that's sure to railroad them into disaster. They quarrel, fall ill, fall in love, betray each other, and lose everything in border towns and courtrooms, their lives completely derailed. The businessman tries to help the dancer stay on track, the journalist conducts a betrayal of the revolutionary, the thief shoots his way toward freedom without missing a station, and the train continues toward its terminus with passengers who've clearly gone off the rails.
Carleton Myatt, a wealthy Jewish businessman, climbs aboard the Orient Express with contracts in his briefcase and a head full of commerce, ready to make deals at full steam. He meets Coral Musker, a delicate English dancer who faints before Cologne and declares, "I'm in the chorus", though she's clearly not used to this locomotive lifestyle. Their uneasy companionship gains traction when he buys her a sleeper ticket and tells her, "You must have my compartment," an offer that really moves her.
At the same time Dr. Czinner returns from exile, chugging along while muttering of "my proper work," while Mabel Warren, gin-sodden journalist, conducts herself poorly as she bullies her younger companion Janet Pardoe with threats and insults that hit like a freight train. Josef Grünlich, murderer and thief, carries a pistol in his pocket and dreams of escape, hoping to make a clean getaway without getting railroaded by the law.
Scenes flow like signals flashing past: Coral collapses in her berth (clearly not built for this track), Myatt stares out at "a wilderness of allotments" while his business plans gather steam, Mabel throws herself at a chance for headlines with locomotive determination, and Czinner confesses to Coral, "Your heart's bad. You've been overstraining it for years," a diagnosis that really hits the buffers. Soldiers board at Subotica like unwelcome passengers, travelers are herded into cold official rooms where their fates get switched onto different tracks, and the tension thickens with every station stop.
I read the book as a portrait of Europe rushing toward disaster at express speed, painted inside a moving carriage where strangers reveal themselves with a candor that borders on cruelty, no need for a ticket to ride this emotional roller coaster.
Coral pleads, "One can't tell, can one?" and the innocence of her question delivers more impact than a runaway locomotive, stinging harder than Czinner's speech to the tribunal. Greene builds comedy into tragedy with the precision of a master conductor, as when Grünlich flatters a guard with lies while staying right on schedule, and Myatt negotiates both contracts and affection without missing a beat.
The book struck me as a cousin to Dostoevsky's fables of guilt (both authors expert at keeping readers on the right track emotionally) and as a precursor to Hitchcock's thrillers where compartments conceal guns, lovers, and spies like so much dangerous cargo. Greene himself described these early thrillers as "entertainments," though the entertainment here carries executions, betrayals, and heartbreak inside a sleeping car. Passengers definitely not getting their money's worth for this ticket to ride.
The writing moves through each compartment with the efficiency of a well-oiled engine, featuring brisk dialogue and carefully planted images that stick like Coral's "white mackintosh," Czinner's "shabby overcoat," and Myatt's currants that carry both money and metaphor, freight both literal and literary. I sense how the book signals a continent divided between commerce and ideology, and I admire the audacity of a young author who could compress politics, passion, and crime into the sealed world of a train without the whole thing jumping the tracks.
Greene manages to pull me into the corridor with the force of a powerful locomotive, where doors slam like coupling cars, soldiers bark orders like stationmasters, and passengers vanish into custody while their plans completely derail. Meanwhile, the wheels hammer out a rhythm that carries me on toward Istanbul and beyond, a journey where every passenger's story reaches its final destination, whether they bought a ticket for it or not.
Carleton Myatt, a wealthy Jewish businessman, climbs aboard the Orient Express with contracts in his briefcase and a head full of commerce, ready to make deals at full steam. He meets Coral Musker, a delicate English dancer who faints before Cologne and declares, "I'm in the chorus", though she's clearly not used to this locomotive lifestyle. Their uneasy companionship gains traction when he buys her a sleeper ticket and tells her, "You must have my compartment," an offer that really moves her.
At the same time Dr. Czinner returns from exile, chugging along while muttering of "my proper work," while Mabel Warren, gin-sodden journalist, conducts herself poorly as she bullies her younger companion Janet Pardoe with threats and insults that hit like a freight train. Josef Grünlich, murderer and thief, carries a pistol in his pocket and dreams of escape, hoping to make a clean getaway without getting railroaded by the law.
Scenes flow like signals flashing past: Coral collapses in her berth (clearly not built for this track), Myatt stares out at "a wilderness of allotments" while his business plans gather steam, Mabel throws herself at a chance for headlines with locomotive determination, and Czinner confesses to Coral, "Your heart's bad. You've been overstraining it for years," a diagnosis that really hits the buffers. Soldiers board at Subotica like unwelcome passengers, travelers are herded into cold official rooms where their fates get switched onto different tracks, and the tension thickens with every station stop.
I read the book as a portrait of Europe rushing toward disaster at express speed, painted inside a moving carriage where strangers reveal themselves with a candor that borders on cruelty, no need for a ticket to ride this emotional roller coaster.
Coral pleads, "One can't tell, can one?" and the innocence of her question delivers more impact than a runaway locomotive, stinging harder than Czinner's speech to the tribunal. Greene builds comedy into tragedy with the precision of a master conductor, as when Grünlich flatters a guard with lies while staying right on schedule, and Myatt negotiates both contracts and affection without missing a beat.
The book struck me as a cousin to Dostoevsky's fables of guilt (both authors expert at keeping readers on the right track emotionally) and as a precursor to Hitchcock's thrillers where compartments conceal guns, lovers, and spies like so much dangerous cargo. Greene himself described these early thrillers as "entertainments," though the entertainment here carries executions, betrayals, and heartbreak inside a sleeping car. Passengers definitely not getting their money's worth for this ticket to ride.
The writing moves through each compartment with the efficiency of a well-oiled engine, featuring brisk dialogue and carefully planted images that stick like Coral's "white mackintosh," Czinner's "shabby overcoat," and Myatt's currants that carry both money and metaphor, freight both literal and literary. I sense how the book signals a continent divided between commerce and ideology, and I admire the audacity of a young author who could compress politics, passion, and crime into the sealed world of a train without the whole thing jumping the tracks.
Greene manages to pull me into the corridor with the force of a powerful locomotive, where doors slam like coupling cars, soldiers bark orders like stationmasters, and passengers vanish into custody while their plans completely derail. Meanwhile, the wheels hammer out a rhythm that carries me on toward Istanbul and beyond, a journey where every passenger's story reaches its final destination, whether they bought a ticket for it or not.
June 19, 2024
My second reading of this second novel by Greene proved to be even more rewarding than ever. It is incredible how, right in this early work, so much of his trademark qualities - great characterization, gripping atmosphere, nimble suspense, almost dream-like surrealism and even a trenchant sense of empathy and objectivity - are to be found in simply two hundred and twenty pages of a novel that hurtles along at a great pace and manages to be both a twitching thriller and a tragic tale of loss of innocence and a doomed love story of sorts. Nobody, it seems, could have done it apart from Greene with his astonishing gift for economy, elegance and a Machiavellian sense of wisdom. Utterly, utterly unforgettable.
January 9, 2019
3.5 ⭐
My first Greene.
Although he himself called this one to be an "entertainment" as compared to his other works, The Stamboul Train was anything but that. This is a thriller set during 1930s infused with themes of anti-semitism, communism, love, lust, homosexuality, crime & punishment (justified?).
To me more than the story, it was Greene's writing that left a lasting impression. Definitely going to add his other books to my TBR pile.
My first Greene.
Although he himself called this one to be an "entertainment" as compared to his other works, The Stamboul Train was anything but that. This is a thriller set during 1930s infused with themes of anti-semitism, communism, love, lust, homosexuality, crime & punishment (justified?).
To me more than the story, it was Greene's writing that left a lasting impression. Definitely going to add his other books to my TBR pile.
April 16, 2023
I loved this book even though the version I read was called Stamboul Train, which was the original title I believe. There's something exhilarating about stories set on trains where the carriages are so narrow and the world outside is so wide, even though it is only glimpsed as it speeds by.
I didn't like any of the characters as they were written except for the journalist who was trying to do her job. All the others were escaping from reality or going to meet it head on. I marvel at Greene's variety of descriptions of what's happening in the world beyond the carriage window.
It's books such as this and Eric Ambler's Journey into Fear that make me wish I could have gone on journeys such as these in my own life.
Having said that, my next holiday will be mainly on trains and I hope I meet as many interesting people on my trip as were in the book - I just hope I like them.
I didn't like any of the characters as they were written except for the journalist who was trying to do her job. All the others were escaping from reality or going to meet it head on. I marvel at Greene's variety of descriptions of what's happening in the world beyond the carriage window.
It's books such as this and Eric Ambler's Journey into Fear that make me wish I could have gone on journeys such as these in my own life.
Having said that, my next holiday will be mainly on trains and I hope I meet as many interesting people on my trip as were in the book - I just hope I like them.
April 25, 2022
“A whistle blew, and the train trembled into movement. The station lamps sailed by them into darkness.”
Graham Greenes’s Orient Express was also titled Stamboul Train and Stamboul Express, though within the book the train is referred to as the Istanbul Train. Other locked room/train mysteries that use this train, traveling into the “exotic,” include: Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie, Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, Ian Fleming’s From Russia to Love. Marlene Dietrich in the Shanghai Express I recall, too.
I was reminded of these titles in the terrific little introduction to this Penguin Centennial Edition (1904-2004) by Christopher Hitchens, where he also reminds us that, though this is one novel Greene identified as an “entertainment” (as opposed to his novels categorized as such, literary fiction), that it is still a fine book, and contains thematic threads common to much of Greene’s work: class issues, religious work such as betrayal and redemption.
The chief characters include Coral Musker, a chorus girl who develops a brief relationship with Carleton Myatt, a rich (Jewish) businessman (as Petra correctly notes, though this might not be seen as an anti-semitic portrayal, why is he identified as Jewish and no one else is identified as anything but English?); the spiteful journalist Mabel Warren and her companion, Janet Pardoe; Josef Grunlich, a cunning, murderous burglar, and Dr. Czinner (not particularly a sinner), the communist returning to sacrifice himself in a public way--with publicity for the cause--in Belgrade.
“You put the small thief in prison, but the big thief lives in a palace--” Dr. Czinner’s socialist political philosophy
As opposed to other thrillers and detective novels, Greene is not about whodunnit. We watch the two murders take place (neither of them on the train, actually), so it is no mystery. The main character is Myatt, who connects with the lower class dancer Coral, but it’s also a story about Czinner’s (almost Christian sacrifice). And in case you want Greene’s view of human nature, there is also betrayal and greed, in the end.
This isn’t the great novel Greene would later write; it’s an early book he probably wrote for film (though it is a terrible film version Greene loathed), but I would still rate it 3.5 stars. I read it much slower than I did most mysteries/detective novels/thrillers, as the writing is so much better than most of those works I have read.
Graham Greenes’s Orient Express was also titled Stamboul Train and Stamboul Express, though within the book the train is referred to as the Istanbul Train. Other locked room/train mysteries that use this train, traveling into the “exotic,” include: Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie, Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, Ian Fleming’s From Russia to Love. Marlene Dietrich in the Shanghai Express I recall, too.
I was reminded of these titles in the terrific little introduction to this Penguin Centennial Edition (1904-2004) by Christopher Hitchens, where he also reminds us that, though this is one novel Greene identified as an “entertainment” (as opposed to his novels categorized as such, literary fiction), that it is still a fine book, and contains thematic threads common to much of Greene’s work: class issues, religious work such as betrayal and redemption.
The chief characters include Coral Musker, a chorus girl who develops a brief relationship with Carleton Myatt, a rich (Jewish) businessman (as Petra correctly notes, though this might not be seen as an anti-semitic portrayal, why is he identified as Jewish and no one else is identified as anything but English?); the spiteful journalist Mabel Warren and her companion, Janet Pardoe; Josef Grunlich, a cunning, murderous burglar, and Dr. Czinner (not particularly a sinner), the communist returning to sacrifice himself in a public way--with publicity for the cause--in Belgrade.
“You put the small thief in prison, but the big thief lives in a palace--” Dr. Czinner’s socialist political philosophy
As opposed to other thrillers and detective novels, Greene is not about whodunnit. We watch the two murders take place (neither of them on the train, actually), so it is no mystery. The main character is Myatt, who connects with the lower class dancer Coral, but it’s also a story about Czinner’s (almost Christian sacrifice). And in case you want Greene’s view of human nature, there is also betrayal and greed, in the end.
This isn’t the great novel Greene would later write; it’s an early book he probably wrote for film (though it is a terrible film version Greene loathed), but I would still rate it 3.5 stars. I read it much slower than I did most mysteries/detective novels/thrillers, as the writing is so much better than most of those works I have read.
January 8, 2023
Surprisingly modern for a novel published in 1932. Wikipediatells us this was Greene's "first true success".
Is this an anti-semitic novel? For sure, it depicts anti-semitism in the areas that the Orient Express travels through. Myatt faces hostility and discrimination along the journey, and . I concluded that this is a book that depicts antisemitism (which of course was mostrously real in that setting) but does not justify it. Myatt is an imperfect man (but he is far from the most imperfect in its cast of characters), and . The wipipedia article on the book has some interesting pointers on this subject. Is the novel homophobic? Again, the lesbian in the book is not likeable. But then there are other characters who are less likeable, not the least among them a complete lout of a thief. So again, it's hard to say. I might be clouded by my love of Greene, but I decided to treat this as he wanted it to be treated, an entertainment (he disowned a couple of novels that he wrote before this one).
It works as an entertaiment, for sure. The cast of characters includes a vain writer whose works have sold 100,000 copies (apparently a certain writer threatened to sue the publisher when he read the proofs), the aforesaid lesbian who is an aggressive journalist, a chorus girl, and above all, a communist revolutionary. It gets off to a slow start, but picks up speed soon enough. Bullets fly and there is a fair amount of mayhem... and the good men and women do not have the best luck. Some of the most poignant moments happen in the minds of two key characters -- the revolutionary and the chorus girl -- first, and then in the things that happen to them. The rotating points of view of the insecure, doubt-ridden cast in the midst of the fast-paced action make this a very sophisticated work.
I listened to the audiobook superbly narrated by Michael Maloney.
Is this an anti-semitic novel? For sure, it depicts anti-semitism in the areas that the Orient Express travels through. Myatt faces hostility and discrimination along the journey, and . I concluded that this is a book that depicts antisemitism (which of course was mostrously real in that setting) but does not justify it. Myatt is an imperfect man (but he is far from the most imperfect in its cast of characters), and . The wipipedia article on the book has some interesting pointers on this subject. Is the novel homophobic? Again, the lesbian in the book is not likeable. But then there are other characters who are less likeable, not the least among them a complete lout of a thief. So again, it's hard to say. I might be clouded by my love of Greene, but I decided to treat this as he wanted it to be treated, an entertainment (he disowned a couple of novels that he wrote before this one).
It works as an entertaiment, for sure. The cast of characters includes a vain writer whose works have sold 100,000 copies (apparently a certain writer threatened to sue the publisher when he read the proofs), the aforesaid lesbian who is an aggressive journalist, a chorus girl, and above all, a communist revolutionary. It gets off to a slow start, but picks up speed soon enough. Bullets fly and there is a fair amount of mayhem... and the good men and women do not have the best luck. Some of the most poignant moments happen in the minds of two key characters -- the revolutionary and the chorus girl -- first, and then in the things that happen to them. The rotating points of view of the insecure, doubt-ridden cast in the midst of the fast-paced action make this a very sophisticated work.
I listened to the audiobook superbly narrated by Michael Maloney.
March 10, 2022
” Avanti e indietro, avanti e indietro nel corridoio,
lei aveva visto il medico camminare,
avvinghiandosi a quella solitudine e preferendola ad uno scompartimento con altri viaggiatori.”
Un libro pieno di speranze disattese.
Immagini dolorose per quella solitudine umana che condanna tutti ad essere chiusi nei propri pensieri, limitati dalla propria prospettiva e costruttori di certezze a cui ci si aggrappa come disperati, finchè le crepe diventano baratri in cui si scivola.
.
Un treno è un luogo dove, inevitabilmente, s’incrociano gli sguardi.
Se quel treno è, però, a lunga percorrenza gli sguardi diventano dialoghi e la possibilità di relazioni aumenta.
Se quel treno poi si chiama "Orient Express" entra in gioco la dimensione storica.
Da Ostenda ad Istanbul.
Dal cuore dei rancori europei( i cui umori agitati presagiscono una realtà fatta di odio e violenza che sta per tracimare) alla capitale turca così bifronte nel suo essere contemporaneamente Occidente ed Oriente.
Greene non solo accompagna il lettore gradualmente a conoscere le storie private ma ci fa intravedere il doppio fondo che può esserci in ognuna di esse.
Colpisce il sottotitolo:" Un Divertimento".
C’è poco da ridere: la vita che scorre dietro ai finestrini s’intravede a malapena tra il ghiaccio che copre i vetri.
Scorre ed è già dimenticata se non fosse per una malinconia costante che non abbandona i passeggeri.
Ecco, mi viene da pensare che forse questo divertimento ha più un significato etimologico piuttosto che letterario.
Forse è da recuperare nel suo uso latino e quindi:
divèrtere, ossia, “volgere altrove deviare”.
Il destino è, infatti, qualcosa che si compie in modi, tempi e luoghi inaspettati come la fermata ad un’innocua stazioncina di un villaggio serbo...
”Ma nel rimbombare del treno in corsa il rumore era così regolare da equivalere al silenzio, il movimento era così continuo che dopo un po’ di tempo la mente lo accettava come immobilità. Soltanto fuori del treno era possibile la violenza dell’azione, e per tre giorni il treno avrebbe tenuto al sicuro lui e i suoi progetti”
lei aveva visto il medico camminare,
avvinghiandosi a quella solitudine e preferendola ad uno scompartimento con altri viaggiatori.”
Un libro pieno di speranze disattese.
Immagini dolorose per quella solitudine umana che condanna tutti ad essere chiusi nei propri pensieri, limitati dalla propria prospettiva e costruttori di certezze a cui ci si aggrappa come disperati, finchè le crepe diventano baratri in cui si scivola.
.
Un treno è un luogo dove, inevitabilmente, s’incrociano gli sguardi.
Se quel treno è, però, a lunga percorrenza gli sguardi diventano dialoghi e la possibilità di relazioni aumenta.
Se quel treno poi si chiama "Orient Express" entra in gioco la dimensione storica.
Da Ostenda ad Istanbul.
Dal cuore dei rancori europei( i cui umori agitati presagiscono una realtà fatta di odio e violenza che sta per tracimare) alla capitale turca così bifronte nel suo essere contemporaneamente Occidente ed Oriente.
Greene non solo accompagna il lettore gradualmente a conoscere le storie private ma ci fa intravedere il doppio fondo che può esserci in ognuna di esse.
Colpisce il sottotitolo:" Un Divertimento".
C’è poco da ridere: la vita che scorre dietro ai finestrini s’intravede a malapena tra il ghiaccio che copre i vetri.
Scorre ed è già dimenticata se non fosse per una malinconia costante che non abbandona i passeggeri.
Ecco, mi viene da pensare che forse questo divertimento ha più un significato etimologico piuttosto che letterario.
Forse è da recuperare nel suo uso latino e quindi:
divèrtere, ossia, “volgere altrove deviare”.
Il destino è, infatti, qualcosa che si compie in modi, tempi e luoghi inaspettati come la fermata ad un’innocua stazioncina di un villaggio serbo...
”Ma nel rimbombare del treno in corsa il rumore era così regolare da equivalere al silenzio, il movimento era così continuo che dopo un po’ di tempo la mente lo accettava come immobilità. Soltanto fuori del treno era possibile la violenza dell’azione, e per tre giorni il treno avrebbe tenuto al sicuro lui e i suoi progetti”
May 14, 2014
If T.S. Eliot, during his Prufrock-Sweeney-Wasteland days had sat down to write a novel, it might have come out looking like Graham Greene’s Orient Express (or, my preferred title, Stamboul Express). Written in 1933, this early novel was considered by Greene to be one of his “entertainments.” I’ve always felt this tag by Greene to be a ridiculous one. It may be a lesser novel, but it’s certainly well-written fiction. In this case, Greene throws a bunch of strangers together on a train in Ostend, Belgium, which is headed to Istanbul. Among them there are a revolutionary (who is late to his own revolution), a chorus girl, a Jewish merchant, a lesbian journalist and her companion, a fat cat burglar, and others. Basically it’s a Ship (or train) of Damned Fools, with each self a Hell to him or herself. Several times I noticed how Greene would linger over characters staring into the windows and mirrors, each of them feeling lonely, empty, a bit lost before their own image.
Yeah, the set-up does, without the brooding, sound like Agatha Christie, but in Greene’s hands the story turns into multiple reflections on good and evil, God (or not), sex, class, and anti-Semitism. Stuff does happen. There’s a murder, shots fired, sex (on a train!), a Kafkaesque trial, a chase. And there are also some fine descriptions (geography, clothing, train travel) that capture the period. Still, there were times I thought the novel just flat out anti-Semitic. Myatt, the Jewish merchant, is constantly shown checking his ledgers, considering costs, advantages to be gained, fanning his success before others like a well fed peacock, etc. And yet, when faced with the choice of love and cutting his losses, he often shows himself a good man trying to do the right thing. Oh, in the end I do think the book anti-Semitic in a murky Greene way, but because it’s Greene it also allows for sympathies and the human heart as well. Certainly nothing like what’s coming in the future Nazi-Mordor.
Yeah, the set-up does, without the brooding, sound like Agatha Christie, but in Greene’s hands the story turns into multiple reflections on good and evil, God (or not), sex, class, and anti-Semitism. Stuff does happen. There’s a murder, shots fired, sex (on a train!), a Kafkaesque trial, a chase. And there are also some fine descriptions (geography, clothing, train travel) that capture the period. Still, there were times I thought the novel just flat out anti-Semitic. Myatt, the Jewish merchant, is constantly shown checking his ledgers, considering costs, advantages to be gained, fanning his success before others like a well fed peacock, etc. And yet, when faced with the choice of love and cutting his losses, he often shows himself a good man trying to do the right thing. Oh, in the end I do think the book anti-Semitic in a murky Greene way, but because it’s Greene it also allows for sympathies and the human heart as well. Certainly nothing like what’s coming in the future Nazi-Mordor.
March 30, 2016
One of Greene's early novels.
It was an interesting premise - a number of unconnected characters on the Orient Express from Ostend to Constantinople, whose story becomes connected - and the characters are interesting and built well.
It seems like an opportunity was missed however when events took place off the train, which seemed to distract from, or weaken the story a little for me.
I was also a bit confused about the route of the train, as according to Wikipedia, the train never followed the route of the book: Ostend - Cologne - Vienna - Budapest - Belgrade - Constantinople. Wikipedia Orient Express
Anyways, no spoilers, as the characters do a good job of providing information as the book progresses, so I wouldn't want to ruin it...
A comfortable three stars for me.
It was an interesting premise - a number of unconnected characters on the Orient Express from Ostend to Constantinople, whose story becomes connected - and the characters are interesting and built well.
It seems like an opportunity was missed however when events took place off the train, which seemed to distract from, or weaken the story a little for me.
I was also a bit confused about the route of the train, as according to Wikipedia, the train never followed the route of the book: Ostend - Cologne - Vienna - Budapest - Belgrade - Constantinople. Wikipedia Orient Express
Anyways, no spoilers, as the characters do a good job of providing information as the book progresses, so I wouldn't want to ruin it...
A comfortable three stars for me.
June 23, 2025
Greene's first so called 'Entertainment' with the goal to separate them from his more serious work. Well, this was entertaining, but unlike some of his other Entertainments - some a little bit silly but still fun - this one did have a more serious and sombre side to it too. At least that's what I got from it. The cast of characters aboard the train could have been plucked straight from Murder on the Orient Express (but then, Greene's novel came two years earlier so maybe Agatha Christie read this and got the idea). And indeed, right at the start we have a killer sneaking onto the train; throw in some of the big issues of the time - two being Communism and anti-Semitism - and a whole lot of snobbery, and it turned into quite a deft little thriller. The journey itself; the exterior world passing on by through the windows, doesn't really come in to it so forget scenic imagery: It's all about the probing of his cast of characters in the carriages, who are vividly portrayed, and keeps you wondering of the outcome, which, although there are no real easy resolutions, still left me satisfied. Considering my expectations weren't that high, I was quite surprised; however, it's far off what I'd say are my 4 or 5 favourite Greene novels.
August 3, 2021
Graham managed to get all the way to Page 2 of this book before pissing me off with his casual embrace of the worst kinds of racism. That aside, this book as a lot to recommend it.
This was the first commercially successful book of Greene's, and I imagine it fell onto the English public with a bang. It is ingeniously plotted, clearly written and full of the sorts of snap judgements that pass for sophistication among the educated English of the '30's. We follow the intertwined fates of six or seven people who climb aboard a train bound for Istanboul.
At least one character does not make it, and Greene writes movingly of a person's last thoughts as he sinks into death (p. 152 in my Penguin edition):
The characters are well-rendered and recognizably human (if rather annoyingly conforming to stereotype). One thing I found a little odd is the speed with which the characters' fates pivoted during the journey -- most of them underwent truly life-changing events on a trip that only lasted three days. But that, I suppose, is both the license and duty of a novelist -- to make life grander and more exciting than it actually is.
This was the first commercially successful book of Greene's, and I imagine it fell onto the English public with a bang. It is ingeniously plotted, clearly written and full of the sorts of snap judgements that pass for sophistication among the educated English of the '30's. We follow the intertwined fates of six or seven people who climb aboard a train bound for Istanboul.
At least one character does not make it, and Greene writes movingly of a person's last thoughts as he sinks into death (p. 152 in my Penguin edition):
The world was chaotic; when the poor were starved and the rich were not happier for it; when the thief might be punished or rewarded with titles; when wheat was burned in Canada and coffee in Brazil, and the poor in his own country had no money for bread and starved to death in unheated rooms; the world was out of joint and he had done his best to set it right, but that was over. He was powerless now and happy...He had done all that he could do; nothing was expected of him; they surrendered him their hopelessness, the secret of their beauty and their happiness as well as of their grief, and they led him towards the leafy rustling darkness.
The characters are well-rendered and recognizably human (if rather annoyingly conforming to stereotype). One thing I found a little odd is the speed with which the characters' fates pivoted during the journey -- most of them underwent truly life-changing events on a trip that only lasted three days. But that, I suppose, is both the license and duty of a novelist -- to make life grander and more exciting than it actually is.
September 16, 2025
Graham Greene's Grand Hotel on a European train in 1932. He wanted to write something that gave him pleasure, he said, and also make money. "Stamboul Train" (original UK title) did both. Doomed passengers include a passionate political rebel, a Jean Rhysian chorus girl, a kindly Jewish merchant who suffers snubs, and best of all, a braying lesby reporter out for the scoop of a lifetime between her swigs of gin (the star of the piece for me) and a jealous obsession about a departing tootsie. There's also a simpering travel writer, based on J B Priestley -- or so J B hollered. A helluva trip through sleet and snow with engines hooting and belching steam. "Premier Service" in the restaurant-car.
August 17, 2018
Greene has once again created an assortment of memorable misfits: a pushy, possessive, female, English journalist with her attractive, seemingly-flighty, young companion; a shrewd, young Jewish businessman and his colleagues in Constantinople; a mysterious, middle-aged doctor whose past unfolds during the journey; a penny-less dancer in search of love; a proud author, plus other characters acquired along the route.
They are east-bound on a train to Constantinople. In the beginning I could not see where Greene was going with the story nor keep the characters straight. As it all became clearer, I had high hopes for what I call ‘redemption’ – a character (or characters) acting out of character or rising above expectations. Some did and some didn’t.
I had written a different review, but after reflecting on a friend’s review I have so revised my own.
A train journey to remember. Interesting that Greene wrote this in 1932/3.
They are east-bound on a train to Constantinople. In the beginning I could not see where Greene was going with the story nor keep the characters straight. As it all became clearer, I had high hopes for what I call ‘redemption’ – a character (or characters) acting out of character or rising above expectations. Some did and some didn’t.
I had written a different review, but after reflecting on a friend’s review I have so revised my own.
A train journey to remember. Interesting that Greene wrote this in 1932/3.
March 27, 2020
This novel is one of his 'entertainments' personally categorized by himself to differentiate them from his other serious thrillers (how many titles overall belong to this less serious genre?) of which its title has long kept me wondering till I found out in the Wikipedia website (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stambou...) that Stamboul is a variant of Istanbul, the capital of Turkey, the novel's destination of the Orient Express the famous line starting from Ostend, Belgium connecting Europe and Asia.
I liked the way Graham Greene has narrated on the Ostend departure setting and how Carleton Myatt sees Coral Musker before leaving the station, how they meet and know each other while traveling on the train. His writing is so effective and powerful that, I think, we would love to follow and imagine the scene as if we were either one them or both. For instance:
The train's late, Myatt thought, as he stepped into the corridor. He felt in his waistcoat pocket for the small box of currants he always carried there. ... At the end of the corridor a girl in a white mackintosh turned and gazed at him. A nice figure, he thought. Do I know her? ... Doors slammed along the line of coaches, and a horn was blown. (pp. 8-9)
... Then she stood up and saw him watching her. She was tactful, she was patient, but to Myatt she had little subtlety; he knew that his qualities, the possibilities of annoyance which he offered, were being weighed against her companion's. She wasn't looking up for trouble: that was the expression she would use; and he found her courage, quickness, and decision admirable. 'I think I'll have a cigarette outside,' she said, fumbling in her bag for a packet; then she was beside him.
'A match?'
'Thanks.' And moving out of view of her compartment they stared together into the murmuring darkness.
'I don't like your companion,' Myatt said.
'One can't pick and choose. He's not too bad. His name's Peters.'
Myatt for a moment hesitated. 'Mine's Myatt.'
'Mine's Coral -- Coral Musker.'
... (p. 16)
To continue ...
I liked the way Graham Greene has narrated on the Ostend departure setting and how Carleton Myatt sees Coral Musker before leaving the station, how they meet and know each other while traveling on the train. His writing is so effective and powerful that, I think, we would love to follow and imagine the scene as if we were either one them or both. For instance:
The train's late, Myatt thought, as he stepped into the corridor. He felt in his waistcoat pocket for the small box of currants he always carried there. ... At the end of the corridor a girl in a white mackintosh turned and gazed at him. A nice figure, he thought. Do I know her? ... Doors slammed along the line of coaches, and a horn was blown. (pp. 8-9)
... Then she stood up and saw him watching her. She was tactful, she was patient, but to Myatt she had little subtlety; he knew that his qualities, the possibilities of annoyance which he offered, were being weighed against her companion's. She wasn't looking up for trouble: that was the expression she would use; and he found her courage, quickness, and decision admirable. 'I think I'll have a cigarette outside,' she said, fumbling in her bag for a packet; then she was beside him.
'A match?'
'Thanks.' And moving out of view of her compartment they stared together into the murmuring darkness.
'I don't like your companion,' Myatt said.
'One can't pick and choose. He's not too bad. His name's Peters.'
Myatt for a moment hesitated. 'Mine's Myatt.'
'Mine's Coral -- Coral Musker.'
... (p. 16)
To continue ...
March 6, 2016
Being a big fan of travels, he placed his plots somewhere related to some place.
3* The Third Man
4* The End of the Affair
4* Our Man in Havana
3* The Captain and the Enemy
3* The Quiet American
4* The Ministry of Fear
4* The Power and the Glory
4* The Honorary Consul
3* Orient Express
TR Brighton Rock
TR Travels With My Aunt
TR The Tenth Man
TR Monsignor Quixote
TR The Heart of the Matter
3* The Third Man
4* The End of the Affair
4* Our Man in Havana
3* The Captain and the Enemy
3* The Quiet American
4* The Ministry of Fear
4* The Power and the Glory
4* The Honorary Consul
3* Orient Express
TR Brighton Rock
TR Travels With My Aunt
TR The Tenth Man
TR Monsignor Quixote
TR The Heart of the Matter
January 10, 2025
While not one of Greene's better works, Orient Express is in keeping with his tendency to find fresh settings and surroundings for each new book. In this case, Greene captures the environment of traveling onboard the famous train that stretched from Ostend, Belgium to Constantinople, Turkey.
This is a map of the route taken by the Orient Expressed as described by Greene.
There are subtleties in Greene's narrative that allow for the realization of the sounds and movements of being on a train. He also brings to life the setting of being confined between narrow walls of wood and spans of glass windows. Greene captures the phenomenon of people who are packed into cramped spaces and practically forced to interact with each other. Thus, the passengers get to know one another while the train is making its steady progress towards its distant destination.
The story, however, never seems to gain momentum. It's a relatively short novel with quite a few characters interacting with multiple storylines. This has the effect of spreading out the fabric of the story rather thinly. I would place the love story that develops between two of the passengers as the best of the lot, but it does not go as deep as it should. The most disinteresting storyline concerns a communist dissident with aspirations for martyrdom. And the most daring storyline is one about a lesbian reporter, but 1930s Graham Greene backs off this subject almost as fast as he approaches it.
In the end, this is Graham Greene. As such, Orient Express is filled with his dead-serious writing and Greene's panache for sober observations that reflect life as it happens to be.
There are subtleties in Greene's narrative that allow for the realization of the sounds and movements of being on a train. He also brings to life the setting of being confined between narrow walls of wood and spans of glass windows. Greene captures the phenomenon of people who are packed into cramped spaces and practically forced to interact with each other. Thus, the passengers get to know one another while the train is making its steady progress towards its distant destination.
The story, however, never seems to gain momentum. It's a relatively short novel with quite a few characters interacting with multiple storylines. This has the effect of spreading out the fabric of the story rather thinly. I would place the love story that develops between two of the passengers as the best of the lot, but it does not go as deep as it should. The most disinteresting storyline concerns a communist dissident with aspirations for martyrdom. And the most daring storyline is one about a lesbian reporter, but 1930s Graham Greene backs off this subject almost as fast as he approaches it.
In the end, this is Graham Greene. As such, Orient Express is filled with his dead-serious writing and Greene's panache for sober observations that reflect life as it happens to be.
January 25, 2020
Greene’s first three published novels were failures. He was desperate for this one to succeed.
Greene later labeled it one of his “entertainments” but, as Christopher Hitchens says in his Introduction, it doesn’t fit with the other books Greene classifies thus.
It’s certainly not an entertainment in the style of Murder on the Orient Express
His main weakness in this book, as others have observed, is that, unlike most of his best books, he’s inclined to stereotypes, but agree with Hitchens that the author expresses no anti-Semitism, though some characters are outed for it.
His cast of characters are as follows.
Coral Musker, a sickly chorus girl
Carleton Myatt, a rich Jewish businessman
A lesbian journalist Mabel Warren traveling with her partner Janet Pardoe
Josef Grunlich, a cunning, murderous burglar.
Dr. Richard Czinner, an escaped communist leader and a mysterious school teacher, traveling on a forged British passport to his native Belgrade.
------------
Carleton Myatt was my favorite character. He’s extremely kind, with no hint of ingratiation. Most of the others have a bit of a nasty streak.
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"Everything is lyrical in its ideal essence; tragic in its fate and comic in its existence"
(epigraph of George Santayana added by Greene to convey Greene's sense of ambivalence about people)
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The book is beautifully written and astutely observant of detail. I felt as if I were a passenger on the train for the entire book.
No one write likes this any more…..
“Richard John, with his mackintosh turned up above his ears, leant from the corridor window and saw the sheds begin to move backwards towards the slow wash of the sea. It was the end, he thought, and the beginning. Faces streamed away. A man with a pickaxe on his shoulder swung a red lamp; the smoke from the engine blew round him and obscured his light. The brakes ground, the clouds parted, and the setting sun flashed on the line, the window, and his eyes.
The fire-hole door opened and the blaze and the heat of the furnace for a moment emerged. The driver turned the regulator full open, and the footplate shook with the weight of the coaches. Presently the engine settled smoothly to its work and the last of the sun came out as the train passed through Bruges.
The sparks from the express then became visible, like hordes of scarlet beetles tempted into the air by night, they fell and smouldered by the track, touched leaves and twigs and cabbage-stalks and turned to soot.
As the darkness fell outside, the passengers through the glass could see only the transparent reflection of their own features. In the rushing reverberating express, the noise was so regular that it was the equivalent of silence, movement was so continuous that after a while the mind accepted it as stillness.”
Greene later labeled it one of his “entertainments” but, as Christopher Hitchens says in his Introduction, it doesn’t fit with the other books Greene classifies thus.
It’s certainly not an entertainment in the style of Murder on the Orient Express
His main weakness in this book, as others have observed, is that, unlike most of his best books, he’s inclined to stereotypes, but agree with Hitchens that the author expresses no anti-Semitism, though some characters are outed for it.
His cast of characters are as follows.
Coral Musker, a sickly chorus girl
Carleton Myatt, a rich Jewish businessman
A lesbian journalist Mabel Warren traveling with her partner Janet Pardoe
Josef Grunlich, a cunning, murderous burglar.
Dr. Richard Czinner, an escaped communist leader and a mysterious school teacher, traveling on a forged British passport to his native Belgrade.
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Carleton Myatt was my favorite character. He’s extremely kind, with no hint of ingratiation. Most of the others have a bit of a nasty streak.
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"Everything is lyrical in its ideal essence; tragic in its fate and comic in its existence"
(epigraph of George Santayana added by Greene to convey Greene's sense of ambivalence about people)
==========
The book is beautifully written and astutely observant of detail. I felt as if I were a passenger on the train for the entire book.
No one write likes this any more…..
“Richard John, with his mackintosh turned up above his ears, leant from the corridor window and saw the sheds begin to move backwards towards the slow wash of the sea. It was the end, he thought, and the beginning. Faces streamed away. A man with a pickaxe on his shoulder swung a red lamp; the smoke from the engine blew round him and obscured his light. The brakes ground, the clouds parted, and the setting sun flashed on the line, the window, and his eyes.
The fire-hole door opened and the blaze and the heat of the furnace for a moment emerged. The driver turned the regulator full open, and the footplate shook with the weight of the coaches. Presently the engine settled smoothly to its work and the last of the sun came out as the train passed through Bruges.
The sparks from the express then became visible, like hordes of scarlet beetles tempted into the air by night, they fell and smouldered by the track, touched leaves and twigs and cabbage-stalks and turned to soot.
As the darkness fell outside, the passengers through the glass could see only the transparent reflection of their own features. In the rushing reverberating express, the noise was so regular that it was the equivalent of silence, movement was so continuous that after a while the mind accepted it as stillness.”
February 18, 2019
I read the novel in one of its first editions, under its original title, Stamboul Train. It has a typical British detective story feel, but the motivations and backgrounds of the main characters are described through the lens of pure talent. You can tell right away that such insights are sketched by a master of understanding and portraying the human soul, even if it's among his first works.
I empathized with Coral, who gets the worst deal from fate, due to circumstances but also due to the gratuitous malice of one other character, Joseph Grunlich, who in a minute, when the opportunity arises, simply decides to keep quiet on a matter and screw her over. The elusive doctor John turns out to be a famous Serbian communist who is a wanted man, and when the border patrol catches wind of this they arrest him together with Coral and Grunlich.
Coral is simply there by mistake and desperate to get back to her new lover, Myatt. She is afraid that after just one night together he is not used to her - or tied to her enough - to think about inquiring about what happened to her, and that there will be no way to get in touch once that train leaves the station (in more ways than one). The three detainees make their escape, but the doctor gets shot and Coral stays behind to tend to his wounds, although he is dying.
The crook Grunlich moves on to the car where Myatt was, who did actually come to see what happened to Coral and why she got off from the train. And although he listened to her fears and worries that she might not be reunited with her lover and although he stood to gain or lose nothing from this, he denies having seen a girl, simply out of malice. The car moves further away, and Myatt moves on as well, towards a new life and a marriage.
Coral was, of course, a little silly and I guess not very likable for people who are repulsed by vulnerability (and sadly there are a lot of such people). But this kind of gratuitous cruelty is something I am really upset by, so Grunlich jolted me into disliking him. I think the author did a great job of managing to make us feel things about the various characters and make us also feel the drive to take sides.
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A nice quote about Coral and how she felt solely focused on wanting Myatt to return and dimly hoping for it:
"Intimacy with one person could do this - empty the world of friendships, give a distaste for women's kisses and their bright chatter, make the ordinary world a little unreal and very uninteresting. Even the doctor did not matter to her as he stalked along in a different world, but she remembered as they reached the door of the waiting room to ask him: 'And you? What's happening to you?'"
I empathized with Coral, who gets the worst deal from fate, due to circumstances but also due to the gratuitous malice of one other character, Joseph Grunlich, who in a minute, when the opportunity arises, simply decides to keep quiet on a matter and screw her over. The elusive doctor John turns out to be a famous Serbian communist who is a wanted man, and when the border patrol catches wind of this they arrest him together with Coral and Grunlich.
Coral is simply there by mistake and desperate to get back to her new lover, Myatt. She is afraid that after just one night together he is not used to her - or tied to her enough - to think about inquiring about what happened to her, and that there will be no way to get in touch once that train leaves the station (in more ways than one). The three detainees make their escape, but the doctor gets shot and Coral stays behind to tend to his wounds, although he is dying.
The crook Grunlich moves on to the car where Myatt was, who did actually come to see what happened to Coral and why she got off from the train. And although he listened to her fears and worries that she might not be reunited with her lover and although he stood to gain or lose nothing from this, he denies having seen a girl, simply out of malice. The car moves further away, and Myatt moves on as well, towards a new life and a marriage.
Coral was, of course, a little silly and I guess not very likable for people who are repulsed by vulnerability (and sadly there are a lot of such people). But this kind of gratuitous cruelty is something I am really upset by, so Grunlich jolted me into disliking him. I think the author did a great job of managing to make us feel things about the various characters and make us also feel the drive to take sides.
--------------------------
A nice quote about Coral and how she felt solely focused on wanting Myatt to return and dimly hoping for it:
"Intimacy with one person could do this - empty the world of friendships, give a distaste for women's kisses and their bright chatter, make the ordinary world a little unreal and very uninteresting. Even the doctor did not matter to her as he stalked along in a different world, but she remembered as they reached the door of the waiting room to ask him: 'And you? What's happening to you?'"
July 31, 2019
Yahudi karşıtlığının tavan yaptığı ve komünizm korkusunun her yeri sardığı bir Avrupa arka planında, hayatları bir tren yolculuğu sayesinde kesişen insanların yaşadığı şeyleri anlatıyor kitap. Ostende'de başlayıp İstanbul'da sona eren yolculuğun her bir durağı kitabın bölümlerini oluşturuyor. Ana hikayede önemli bir yer tutan karakterler oldukça çeşitli; bir revü kızı, alkolik ve eşcinsel bir kadın gazeteci, bir yahudi, bir hırsız ve bir devrimci. Her birinin istemsizce diğerinin hayatının yönünü nasıl da değiştirdiğini okuyoruz kitapta. Yer yer düşündüren, yer yer de geren bir kitaptı benim için. Yazara göre kitap, mesaj taşımadığı için 'hafif bir roman'. Yine de kurgunun geçtiği dönemin atmosferinden dolayı okunması ve kişide bıraktığı his pek de hafif değil bence.
March 19, 2022
Stamboul Train (1932) is one of Graham Greene's early entertainments, written as a money-making venture and with the intention of being made into a film (which it was).
Whilst not up there with Greene's best, it is still well written and gives a real sense of being aboard the Orient Express as it crosses Europe from Ostend to Istanbul.
One of the main characters, Carleton Myatt, is a Jewish currant trader, travelling to Istanbul to sort out an issue with the agent of his firm. Greene makes great play of his being Jewish, perhaps reflecting the attitudes of the time it was written. It's unnecessarily and explicitly anti-semetic and has dated very badly.
Despite being a short book, it takes a while to get going but is, ultimately, an exciting tale with many underhand moments. All the characters are somewhat precarious and bringing their struggles to life is where this book succeeds best, along with the sense of being on the train. Of course, bringing marginal characters vividly to life became one of the recurring and defining themes of Graham Greene's novels throughout his long and illustrious writing career.
3/5
Published in 1932 as an 'entertainment', Graham Greene's gripping spy thriller unfolds aboard the majestic Orient Express as it crosses Europe from Ostend to Istanbul.
Weaving a web of subterfuge, murder and politics along the way, the novel focuses upon the disturbing relationship between Myatt, the pragmatic Jew, and naive chorus girl Coral Musker as they engage in a desperate, angst-ridden pas-de-deux before a chilling turn of events spells an end to the unlikely interlude. Exploring the many shades of despair and hope, innocence and duplicity, Stamboul Train offers a poignant testimony to Greene's extraordinary powers of insight into the human condition.
Whilst not up there with Greene's best, it is still well written and gives a real sense of being aboard the Orient Express as it crosses Europe from Ostend to Istanbul.
One of the main characters, Carleton Myatt, is a Jewish currant trader, travelling to Istanbul to sort out an issue with the agent of his firm. Greene makes great play of his being Jewish, perhaps reflecting the attitudes of the time it was written. It's unnecessarily and explicitly anti-semetic and has dated very badly.
Despite being a short book, it takes a while to get going but is, ultimately, an exciting tale with many underhand moments. All the characters are somewhat precarious and bringing their struggles to life is where this book succeeds best, along with the sense of being on the train. Of course, bringing marginal characters vividly to life became one of the recurring and defining themes of Graham Greene's novels throughout his long and illustrious writing career.
3/5
Published in 1932 as an 'entertainment', Graham Greene's gripping spy thriller unfolds aboard the majestic Orient Express as it crosses Europe from Ostend to Istanbul.
Weaving a web of subterfuge, murder and politics along the way, the novel focuses upon the disturbing relationship between Myatt, the pragmatic Jew, and naive chorus girl Coral Musker as they engage in a desperate, angst-ridden pas-de-deux before a chilling turn of events spells an end to the unlikely interlude. Exploring the many shades of despair and hope, innocence and duplicity, Stamboul Train offers a poignant testimony to Greene's extraordinary powers of insight into the human condition.
February 8, 2020
Graham Greene ci narra le vite di alcune persone che viaggiano in uno dei treni più famosi della letteratura mondiale, ovvero l'Orient Express, celebre soprattutto per il giallo che vi ha ambientato Agatha Christie, Assassinio sull'Orient Express. La cosa curiosa è che questo romanzo è stato scritto proprio un anno prima di quello appena citato della Christie, nel 1932.
Attraverso il gruppo di viaggiatori che salgono sul treno, Greene dipinge un campione dell’umanità rappresentativa dell’epoca, e i cui destini si intrecciano e definiscono il mood. Si percepisce il timore all’approssimarsi delle frontiere che il treno attraversa, perché sono sorvegliate e i controlli possono essere fonte di preoccupazione. Si respira un’aria densa di tensione, così come salta fuori l’odio verso gli ebrei, gli impeti rivoluzionari dettati dalle differenze tra le classi sociali, un certo atteggiamento distante dalla realtà da parte dei religiosi, un disincantato cinismo nei rapporti tra uomini e donne, dove sembrano prevalere più gli interessi che i sentimenti, anche se nascosti da un candore più perbenista che autentico.
Bisogna anche dire che lo stile di scrittura di Greene si sposa benissimo alla descrizione cinematografia, egli infatti passa a narrarci le vite dei vari protagonisti con stacchi spesso rapidi e con vari flashback.
Lettura piacevole e concordo con l'intento dell'autore: ha scritto un'opera da entertainments, ma dove gli strascichi della guerra passata e quella che stava per iniziare si sentono tutti.
Attraverso il gruppo di viaggiatori che salgono sul treno, Greene dipinge un campione dell’umanità rappresentativa dell’epoca, e i cui destini si intrecciano e definiscono il mood. Si percepisce il timore all’approssimarsi delle frontiere che il treno attraversa, perché sono sorvegliate e i controlli possono essere fonte di preoccupazione. Si respira un’aria densa di tensione, così come salta fuori l’odio verso gli ebrei, gli impeti rivoluzionari dettati dalle differenze tra le classi sociali, un certo atteggiamento distante dalla realtà da parte dei religiosi, un disincantato cinismo nei rapporti tra uomini e donne, dove sembrano prevalere più gli interessi che i sentimenti, anche se nascosti da un candore più perbenista che autentico.
Bisogna anche dire che lo stile di scrittura di Greene si sposa benissimo alla descrizione cinematografia, egli infatti passa a narrarci le vite dei vari protagonisti con stacchi spesso rapidi e con vari flashback.
Lettura piacevole e concordo con l'intento dell'autore: ha scritto un'opera da entertainments, ma dove gli strascichi della guerra passata e quella che stava per iniziare si sentono tutti.
March 1, 2023
The characters, travelling by train from Belgium through to Constantinople, are well-developed but odd choices.
Myatt the Jewish character is often no more than a caricature of a large-nosed, money-loving Jew. Greene's antisemitism has been debated, but I did find it overt when he refers to the characteristics of Myatt's race. But Greene also shows Myatt as a man of character with a conscience and great empathy.
The old Serbian communist doctor returning home to a bleak fate was another strange choice for a protagonist. Much of the book takes place in Subotica, a town in Serbia/Yugoslavia on the Hungarian border. Yugoslavia is not the most famous setting in Greeneland. And the politics of a socialist/communist revolt there must have been quite obscure to Greene's readers in the early 1930s.
The English chorus girl Coral is uneducated and unsure of herself but resilient when she gets arrested in Serbia as the doctor's unwilling accomplice. A Lesbian journalist and a comic Austrian thief round out the main cast. Much of the book details the characters' inner monologues and struggles not to show their true feelings and motivations to others. An interesting novel, but Greene became a clearer, more straightforward writer later on.
A film of this was made in 1934 - and it has a rating of over 7 out of 10 on IMBD. Anything over 7 usually means it's a good movie. I can't find it anywhere online.
Myatt the Jewish character is often no more than a caricature of a large-nosed, money-loving Jew. Greene's antisemitism has been debated, but I did find it overt when he refers to the characteristics of Myatt's race. But Greene also shows Myatt as a man of character with a conscience and great empathy.
The old Serbian communist doctor returning home to a bleak fate was another strange choice for a protagonist. Much of the book takes place in Subotica, a town in Serbia/Yugoslavia on the Hungarian border. Yugoslavia is not the most famous setting in Greeneland. And the politics of a socialist/communist revolt there must have been quite obscure to Greene's readers in the early 1930s.
The English chorus girl Coral is uneducated and unsure of herself but resilient when she gets arrested in Serbia as the doctor's unwilling accomplice. A Lesbian journalist and a comic Austrian thief round out the main cast. Much of the book details the characters' inner monologues and struggles not to show their true feelings and motivations to others. An interesting novel, but Greene became a clearer, more straightforward writer later on.
A film of this was made in 1934 - and it has a rating of over 7 out of 10 on IMBD. Anything over 7 usually means it's a good movie. I can't find it anywhere online.
June 18, 2016
Fictional train journeys are always better than fictional air travel - the lengthy journey giving the writer ample narrative time & scope to introduce plot twists & interesting characters. Greene called his less serious work 'entertainment', still, the three nights journey from Ostend to Istanbul on the Orient Express inevitably brings the writer's usual ethical & political contretemps in the form of issues & mindsets saturated in the 1930s worldview: each stop on the itinerary bringing more trouble from the complications of the related place.
Orient Express evokes an image of luxury* especially if you've books like Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express in mind but Greene's journalistic sensibility brings a a factual class based approach where upward movement from a wooden chair car to a first class private compartment comes with a price in more ways than one...
And what does a poor girl from the '30s bring to thetable umm couch? Why, her virginity of course! I cringed when that happened & at the lame romantic dialogues that followed ( Greene reminds me of WTV in that sense) — but I needn't have because there's also the world-weary absurd-comic cynical Greene who knows that relationships work only when they are mutually beneficial, that convenience is the name of the game, that in the end it doesn't matter if you miss the bus express so long as you can get on the gravy train!
The book fits its epigraph from George Santayana, "Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence", to a t.
* Btw, if you are traveling to India, I can't recommend the Palace on Wheels experience enough!
Orient Express evokes an image of luxury* especially if you've books like Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express in mind but Greene's journalistic sensibility brings a a factual class based approach where upward movement from a wooden chair car to a first class private compartment comes with a price in more ways than one...
And what does a poor girl from the '30s bring to the
The book fits its epigraph from George Santayana, "Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence", to a t.
* Btw, if you are traveling to India, I can't recommend the Palace on Wheels experience enough!
March 22, 2022
I liked many aspects of Stamboul Train, but it had one huge, unpleasant flaw which I found it impossible to ignore.
Greene creates a fine atmosphere of the train itself and the journey across Europe in 1932. He also creates some interesting characters whom he treats largely with insight and intelligence, whose stories make an absorbing and sometimes tense narrative – the scene at a small, almost lawless border post, for example, is atmospheric and very unsettling. It’s a good story (or stories), well told – but…
Myatt, one of the main characters is Jewish, and the anti-Semitism with which he is portrayed really made this a tough read for me in places. I know that one must make allowances for prevailing attitudes when reading fiction from almost a century ago, but this was written in 1932 and given what happened in Central Europe just a few years later, it’s hard to take. It’s not even that Greene is just pointing out the anti-Semitic attitudes of many people – although he does do that – but many of those attitudes are entrenched his own narrative and description. Myatt is often referred to as “the Jew” and scarcely a scene goes by without some reference made to his “race” and its supposed characteristics. It is as if Greene is diligently working through all the offensive stereotypes trotted out by anti-Semites; as an example, Greene has Myatt thinking to himself “I am a Jew, and I have learned nothing except how to make money.” I rest my case.
So, for me this was a good book with a huge, ugly scar. It makes it very hard to rate; I enjoyed many aspects of it, but I can’t give it more than two stars. Approach with caution.
Greene creates a fine atmosphere of the train itself and the journey across Europe in 1932. He also creates some interesting characters whom he treats largely with insight and intelligence, whose stories make an absorbing and sometimes tense narrative – the scene at a small, almost lawless border post, for example, is atmospheric and very unsettling. It’s a good story (or stories), well told – but…
Myatt, one of the main characters is Jewish, and the anti-Semitism with which he is portrayed really made this a tough read for me in places. I know that one must make allowances for prevailing attitudes when reading fiction from almost a century ago, but this was written in 1932 and given what happened in Central Europe just a few years later, it’s hard to take. It’s not even that Greene is just pointing out the anti-Semitic attitudes of many people – although he does do that – but many of those attitudes are entrenched his own narrative and description. Myatt is often referred to as “the Jew” and scarcely a scene goes by without some reference made to his “race” and its supposed characteristics. It is as if Greene is diligently working through all the offensive stereotypes trotted out by anti-Semites; as an example, Greene has Myatt thinking to himself “I am a Jew, and I have learned nothing except how to make money.” I rest my case.
So, for me this was a good book with a huge, ugly scar. It makes it very hard to rate; I enjoyed many aspects of it, but I can’t give it more than two stars. Approach with caution.
February 6, 2022
Published in 1932, this is a fairly early novel by Graham Greene and takes place mostly aboard the Orient Express, as it travels from Ostend to Constantinople. There are a mixed group of passengers aboard, including a Jewish businessman, an impoverished chorus girl, a lesbian journalist and an escaped communist leader.
I have had rather a mixed experience with Graham Greene - having loved some of his books and not been as keen on others. I feel this is one that, although I am pleased I read it, dragged somewhat. However, it is clear that Greene made an effort to create an entertaining novel, looking for commercial success and there is a lot of action, with people being arrested, escaping and general subterfuge and love affairs.
This has not aged particularly well. The constant anti-Semitism, while obviously relevant for the period, is uncomfortable to read and some of the characters seem quite stereotypical. That said, an interesting thriller, with a good setting.
I have had rather a mixed experience with Graham Greene - having loved some of his books and not been as keen on others. I feel this is one that, although I am pleased I read it, dragged somewhat. However, it is clear that Greene made an effort to create an entertaining novel, looking for commercial success and there is a lot of action, with people being arrested, escaping and general subterfuge and love affairs.
This has not aged particularly well. The constant anti-Semitism, while obviously relevant for the period, is uncomfortable to read and some of the characters seem quite stereotypical. That said, an interesting thriller, with a good setting.
November 18, 2014
Review first posted on BookLikes:
"I’m tired of being decent, of doing the right thing."
Stamboul Train is the story of a number of individuals who are thrown together within the confines of a train journey - a microcosm, in a way - and Greene offers us a peek into the relationships that develop between the characters and the difficulty that each of the individuals has to adapt to the society they form.
It took a while to get into the story - just because every character has a story about how they came to embark on the journey on the Orient Express from Ostend to Istanbul.
At first, I thought this was going to be an easy read - because it is still an early one of Greene's entertainments - but it soon turned out that Stamboul Train seems to mark quite a turning point in Greene's writing:
Greene maintains his focus on the themes of individualism and social perception from a variety of angels which cannot be combined, and which - because of their incompatibility - now create a highly atmospheric state of disillusionment.
"Then the man spoke to her, and she was compelled to emerge from her hidden world and wear a pose of cheerfulness and courage."
More importantly to my reading enjoyment, though, Stamboul Train shows a consistent use of that refined prose which only shimmered through in The Man Within:
"He saw the express in which they had travelled breaking the dark sky like a rocket. They clung to it with every stratagem in their power, leaning this way and leaning that, altering the balance now in this direction, now in that. One had to be very alive, very flexible, very opportunist. The snow on the lips had all melted and its effect was passing. Before the spill had flickered to its end, his sight had dimmed, and the great shed with its cargo of sacks floated away from him into the darkness. He had no sense that he was within it; he thought that he was left behind, watching it disappear. His mind became confused, and soon he was falling through endless space, breathless, with a windy vacancy in head and chest, because he had been unable to retain his foothold on what was sometimes a ship and at other times a comet, the world itself, or only a fast train from Ostend to Istanbul."
"I’m tired of being decent, of doing the right thing."
Stamboul Train is the story of a number of individuals who are thrown together within the confines of a train journey - a microcosm, in a way - and Greene offers us a peek into the relationships that develop between the characters and the difficulty that each of the individuals has to adapt to the society they form.
It took a while to get into the story - just because every character has a story about how they came to embark on the journey on the Orient Express from Ostend to Istanbul.
At first, I thought this was going to be an easy read - because it is still an early one of Greene's entertainments - but it soon turned out that Stamboul Train seems to mark quite a turning point in Greene's writing:
Greene maintains his focus on the themes of individualism and social perception from a variety of angels which cannot be combined, and which - because of their incompatibility - now create a highly atmospheric state of disillusionment.
"Then the man spoke to her, and she was compelled to emerge from her hidden world and wear a pose of cheerfulness and courage."
More importantly to my reading enjoyment, though, Stamboul Train shows a consistent use of that refined prose which only shimmered through in The Man Within:
"He saw the express in which they had travelled breaking the dark sky like a rocket. They clung to it with every stratagem in their power, leaning this way and leaning that, altering the balance now in this direction, now in that. One had to be very alive, very flexible, very opportunist. The snow on the lips had all melted and its effect was passing. Before the spill had flickered to its end, his sight had dimmed, and the great shed with its cargo of sacks floated away from him into the darkness. He had no sense that he was within it; he thought that he was left behind, watching it disappear. His mind became confused, and soon he was falling through endless space, breathless, with a windy vacancy in head and chest, because he had been unable to retain his foothold on what was sometimes a ship and at other times a comet, the world itself, or only a fast train from Ostend to Istanbul."
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