Kees Popinga is a respectable Dutch citizen and family man. Until the day he discovers that his boss has bankrupted the shipping firm he works for — and something snaps. Kees used to watch the trains go by, heading to exciting destinations. Now, on some dark impulse, he boards one at random, and begins a new life of reckless violence. This chilling portrayal of a man who breaks from society and goes on the run asks who we are, and what we are capable of.
Classic Simenon…extraordinary in its evocative power – Independent
Read him at your peril, avoid him at your loss — Sunday Times
Georges Simenon was born in Liège, Belgium in 1903 and died in 1989 in Lausanne, Switzerland where he had lived for the latter part of his life. The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By was first published in 1938, during the period when Simenon retired his famous Maigret series in order to focus on making a name for himself as a literary writer and not just a creator of genre fiction. In a stormy meeting with his publisher a few years earlier, Simenon had declared: “It’s over, I’m quitting… Let’s put Maigret on the shelf. I don’t need handrails anymore. I think I can write a real novel now.”
To buy this book, please send me a message.
