Strangers on a train: ‘The Paris Express’ by Emma Donoghue

Brilliant historical fiction, The Paris Express invites readers to join a group of disparate strangers as they ride the Paris Express train through Normandy on an October day in 1895.

Based on a real event, and peopled with fully-drawn characters (many of whom were on the actual train on that day) the novel takes us into their worlds: among others, a wealthy man and his family, a Black American artist, a young woman performer in a Parisian cabaret, a boy travelling alone for the first time, a female student of physiology, a young pregnant woman, and many of the crew and staff of the train and the French railway company that operated it.

Among the hundred or so passengers is also a young, fiercely political woman who has vowed to strike a blow against an unfair world that treats the poor like expendable commodities. She has it within her power to destroy the train and its passengers as they hurtle towards their destination.

The story is well paced: the tension ratchets up as the journey proceeds, and we learn more about the people on board and their interactions with each other. What will happen to these strangers? Will they survive this journey?

The brilliance of the novel lies in the author’s ability to capture a moment in time: late-century French culture, commerce and politics under the microscope of this one journey. Vivid details of the way the train crew operate this complicated piece of machinery and the conditions under which they work. The worlds of art, literature and theatre of the late 1800s. References to empire and the government. The early technologies of photography and a nascent ‘moving pictures’ industry. Developments in transportation: motor cars; and the seed of an idea that would eventually become the underground Paris Metro. Women taking up study and work in areas such as medicine and science.

The turbulence of the time is brought to life through the characters: deeply held political convictions; the fear engendered by violent acts carried out by anarchists in major European cities such as Paris; the growing feminist and suffrage movements; a sense of the old world disappearing as the nineteenth century draws to a close.

This book is a thriller because it is very hard not to care about the characters and their fates as the train continues on its high-speed way to Paris. It is brilliant historical fiction because the real is blended so skillfully with the imagined, that we can’t tell the difference and don’t really care, as the story is so engrossing. The author’s note at the end helpfully sorts out which was which and adds some poignant epilogues to the real-life historical figures.

I listened to the audiobook version, beautifully read by Justin Avoth, who inhabits the characters’ voices with great aplomb.

If you enjoy historical fiction, you are sure to love The Paris Express.

The Paris Express was published by Picador in March 2025. The audio recording published by McMillan Digital Audio in 2025.