Stamboul Train

by Graham Greene

First published 1932

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3.7(896)

Passengers board the train from Ostend to Istanbul carrying ambitions and fears that gradually connect their separate journeys. Jewish businessman Carleton Myatt becomes involved with chorus girl Coral Musker, while the revolutionary physician Dr Czinner travels secretly toward the Balkans in the hope of rejoining a political struggle that has already placed him in danger.

The luxury of international rail travel cannot protect the passengers from prejudice, poverty or state violence once they cross national borders. Police, informers and immigration controls turn a cosmopolitan journey into a sequence of unequal risks. Greene uses the enclosed train to bring together people of different classes and nationalities, then shows how political authority separates them again as they move east through interwar Europe.