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I much prefer “Stamboul Train” the original UK title. I picked this short book up out of curiosity mainly. I count The Quiet American as one of the best books I have read ever and I have a real soft spot for Greene as a result.
The back of the Bantam paperback I read (as well as its risqué cover) would have had me believe that this was a spy novel along the lines of Ian Fleming. But it wasn’t that at all, although there was some sex and intrigue. But it also had characters pondering morals and their place in the world, which is more of what I have come to expect from Greene.
The story is about a disparate group of people traveling on the Orient Express, which in the book runs from Paris to Istanbul with major stops in Belgium, Germany, Austria, Hungary and Serbia. As the train winds its way on the three day and night journey, disparate train passengers get mixed up in each other’s lives. In particular, there is a young Jewish businessman and a chorus girl both traveling to Turkey for professional reasons who meet up when the girl falls ill and a former doctor traveling on a British passport who clearly is not English. In Germany, they pick up a beautiful woman and her journalist companion who recognizes the doctor’s true identity.
There was so much anti-Semitism present in this book, which was first published in 1933. This is not only shown overtly by the author in making the more boorish characters clearly prejudiced and small minded but also inadvertently with Greene adhering to what he probably felt were “positive” yet stereotypical portrayals. This kind of attitude isn’t totally unfamiliar to me because I read a fair amount of older books but YIKES it bugged me. Interestingly enough there is also a clearly lesbian character who receives kinder (though still often stereotypical) treatment.
The back of the Bantam paperback I read (as well as its risqué cover) would have had me believe that this was a spy novel along the lines of Ian Fleming. But it wasn’t that at all, although there was some sex and intrigue. But it also had characters pondering morals and their place in the world, which is more of what I have come to expect from Greene.
The story is about a disparate group of people traveling on the Orient Express, which in the book runs from Paris to Istanbul with major stops in Belgium, Germany, Austria, Hungary and Serbia. As the train winds its way on the three day and night journey, disparate train passengers get mixed up in each other’s lives. In particular, there is a young Jewish businessman and a chorus girl both traveling to Turkey for professional reasons who meet up when the girl falls ill and a former doctor traveling on a British passport who clearly is not English. In Germany, they pick up a beautiful woman and her journalist companion who recognizes the doctor’s true identity.
There was so much anti-Semitism present in this book, which was first published in 1933. This is not only shown overtly by the author in making the more boorish characters clearly prejudiced and small minded but also inadvertently with Greene adhering to what he probably felt were “positive” yet stereotypical portrayals. This kind of attitude isn’t totally unfamiliar to me because I read a fair amount of older books but YIKES it bugged me. Interestingly enough there is also a clearly lesbian character who receives kinder (though still often stereotypical) treatment.
