Moonlight Express

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

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 Trainspotting

Rajesh represents a new generation of traveller. Funny, perceptive and lyrical

Stylist

Recently 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

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

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

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

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 Chocolat

A 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 DALRYMPLE

Monisha 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'