Moonlight Express

Eloquently and amusingly combines the fact and fiction, the cocktail hours and backed-up loos, the charming ticket inspectors and deranged fellow travellers, as she enjoys – and endures – 18 journeys spanning four continents … Hugely entertaining – Christian House * The Times *Full of the stuff of life … Rajesh is excellent at drawing out the reasons why people are travelling by train and most have a story to tell – Christian Wolmar * Spectator *With wit and flair, Monisha Rajesh takes readers aboard night trains across Europe, India, South Africa, the USA, Canada and Peru … Rajesh is a sharp and perceptive writer with a keen eye for detail and context … Packed with evocative details and rich reflections – Shafik Meghji * Geographical Magazine *Monisha Rajesh is no stranger to the railway’s magic, having written about her journeys around India and circumnavigating the globe by train. Here, she takes night trains in Finland, Scotland, Austria, Turkey and Bulgaria, Peru and the US … She can write beautifully, describing a view or recalling a conversation – Jason Goodwin * Country Life *Rajesh’s adventures – involving multiple sleeper trains – are filled with literary wonderment, plot twists and unsavoury revelations … Rajesh is never didactic, weaving these revelations into her human encounters … Mesmerising prose tantalises readers to not only read one but also experience for themselves the routes that Rajesh has embarked on … Written beautifully as a travel journalist’s love letter to trains, her book is also an implicit argument for the kinds of social bonds that are maintained with “less efficient” means of transport. It is a book to savour – Shawn Hoo * Straits Times *I love trains, and nobody writes trains like Monisha Rajesh. Most of all, I’m nuts about night trains. You can’t beat shuffling into a dead, post-apocalyptic station, slipping or battling into sleep, and waking up, emerging into another city that is just coming alive – IRVINE WELSH, author of TrainspottingRecently night trains have made a comeback … This revival is at the heart of Monisha Rajesh’s entertaining travelogue in which she describes eighteen journeys made by night train across four continents * The Week *Rajesh excels at capturing what night trains offer that day trains and planes can’t: time to breathe, space for unexpected encounters, and a sense of suspension. Her prose turns luminous in these pauses … Night trains become a way of thinking about how travel is changing … The strongest sections, however, are not about infrastructure but about people: the businessman who books a berth “for the thrill of the night train”, honeymooners disillusioned by flat pillows, and families who prefer a moving bedroom to airport stress … Rajesh’s writing reveals how the sleeper train has been reborn: not as a museum piece but as a model of slow, responsible travel, focusing more on the journey than the destination – Teja Lele * Tribune India *Monisha Rajesh’s latest instalment in the world of trains – this time, sleeper trains. Rajesh is a bright, vivid writer who does not shy away from reality in her tales of trains * Financial Times, Books of the Year, as chosen by FT readers *The night train has cast its romantic spell across continents and cultures – and the pages of Moonlight Express … Each night train is a world of its own, with the dining car at the heart of it. On some trains, it’s a party carriage; on others, it is quieter, with knitting and Sudoku … Rajesh doesn’t leave her social conscience behind while she’s travelling – Alev Adil * TLS *Monisha Rajesh is clear about the romance, social enjoyment, and moral worth of night-time rail journeys … Nocturnal these journeys may be, but they are never silent, and never without tales to tell … Exhilarating – Stephen Platten * Church Times *From Austria’s Nightjet to Finland’s Santa Claus Express, the author of former Waterstones Non-Fiction Book of the Month Around the World in 80 Trains takes readers on another hugely entertaining global locomotive journey – this time by nocturnal sleeper train. * Waterstones - The Best Nature & Travel Writing of 2025 *Takes readers across continents, pausing not only at grand landmarks … but also at train station bookstalls, quiet rivers that twist under moonlight … Her appetite for detail made me hungry, curious and often delighted … Her descriptions of the skies are especially poetic … Each page is a reminder that the view from a train window is never static … The book is also a gallery of people – co-travellers who become companions for a few miles or a few days … The writing blends history, culture, and politics with humour and intimacy … Reading Moonlight Express was an indulgence I didn’t want to rush … more than a travelogue: it is a confession, a celebration, a hymn to the railway and its endless promise. Moonlight Express left me nostalgic, restless and electrified. Closing the book, I realised I was suffering from what she herself calls “disembarkation sickness”, the ache of leaving behind a journey I never wanted to end – Sangeetha Vallat * eShe Magazine *One of the best travel books … A celebration of “the rumble of sleeper trains returning to the tracks” … Whether she’s travelling with a journalist friend through Turkey, or with her husband and daughters on the Santa Claus Express in Finland, she’s always a reporter, chatting up staff from drivers to chefs and deliberately sitting near the passengers who look most likely to talk * Deskbound Traveller *Remarkable: not just a book about travelling, but about the stories we collect, the people we meet, and the world that we see differently with every connection we make along the way. I loved it – JOANNE HARRIS, author of ChocolatA moonlit express train to travel writing heaven, steaming through the night emitting plumes of bright sparks from its smokestack. This is Monisha Rajesh’s wittiest and most irresistible adventure yet – WILLIAM DALRYMPLEMonisha Rajesh has chosen one of the best ways of seeing the world. Never too fast, never too slow, her journey does what trains do best. Getting to the heart of things. Prepare for a very fine ride – Michael Palin on ‘Around the World in 80 Trains’A wonderful companion – Irvine Welsh on ‘Around India in 80 Trains’Crackles and sparks with life like an exploding box of Diwali fireworks – William Dalrymple on ‘Around India in 80 Trains’What makes the book is Rajesh’s wit, astute observations and willingness to try everything … She arrived at St Pancras, on time, tired and triumphant. Her riveting account of the odyssey leaves us feeling the same – THE TIMES on ‘Around the World in 80 Trains’Rajesh is a rare rising star of the genre … She has a simple and easy style, she sees everything and listens to everyone, she’s funny when she wants to be and serious when she needs to be, and she keeps the whole thing barreling along like a wonderful dinner party conversation – DAILY MAIL on ‘Around the World in 80 Trains’A triumph: a rollicking account, full of memorable encounters and laced with wit – THE WEEK on ‘Around the World in 80 Trains’Rajesh offers us a never-ending series of Theroux-esque, quirky anecdotes … If you fancy learning about global travel in the relative slow lane, try boarding this carriage and staring out the window – GEOGRAPHICAL on ‘Around the World in 80 Trains’

Monisha Rajesh is a British journalist whose writing has appeared in Time magazine, the New York Times, and Vanity Fair. Her first book, Around India in 80 Trains, was named one of the Independent’s best books on India. Her second book, Around the World in 80 Trains, won the National Geographic Traveller Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year. In 2024 she was named in Condé Nast Traveller’s Women Who Travel Power List. She lives in London.