Back to The Globe
Featured Thriller
The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By (Romans Durs)
A private confession leads an ordinary Dutchman to abandon his family for a life on the run in Georges Simenon’s existentialist masterpiece.
Your reading world on The Globe
Discover your next book. Keep the ones that matter.
Join The Globe for a free reader profile and discover books, writers and stories in one place.
About the book
About The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By (Romans Durs)
A private confession leads an ordinary Dutchman to abandon his family for a life on the run in Georges Simenon’s existentialist masterpiece. Kees Popinga has always played by society’s rules. A dutiful husband and father, he owns a house in a nice neighborhood and holds down a responsible job in the shipping industry. Fantasies of escape, of rebellion, are kept carefully contained―until the night Kees’s boss makes a private confession. Having recklessly bankrupted the firm, he plans to fake his own death. Kees is not only shocked; he’s exhilarated. Abandoning his home and family, he is soon a violent fugitive, wanted by police in Amsterdam and Paris. Has he gone insane, or was his compliant former self a masquerade? Infused with Georges Simenon’s gift for moral complexity, The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By is a haunting existentialist masterpiece.
Reader conversation
Discuss this book
Are you the author or publisher?
Claim this page to verify the book information, add an author profile, update purchase links or request removal.