Moonlight Express
- Author Monisha Rajesh
- Narrator Monisha Rajesh
- Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
- Publish Date 28 August 2025
- Run Time 11 hours and 28 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Travel writing.
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What to expect
SHORTLISTED FOR TRAVEL BOOK OF THE YEAR AT THE 2026 EDWARD STANFORD TRAVEL WRITING AWARDS
A FINANCIAL TIMES READERS BOOK OF THE YEAR
From the author of the smash-hit Around the World in 80 Trains comes a new globetrotting journey - this time celebrating the peculiar magic and mayhem of the night train.
'Nobody writes trains like Monisha Rajesh' Irvine Welsh
'Hugely entertaining' The Times
'A moonlit express train to travel writing heaven. This is Monisha Rajesh's wittiest and most irresistible adventure yet' William Dalrymple
The wonder of the night train: headlamps ablaze, passengers boarding after sunset and leaving before sunrise, slipping in and out of compartments unseen. For Monisha Rajesh, the singular thrill of sleeper trains inspired a new journey around the world – one filled with moonlit landscapes, cosy compartments and quirky companions.
From Austria’s Nightjet to the Caledonian Sleeper and the Santa Claus Express, Rajesh invites us on an adventure aboard the world’s most wondrous night trains. Along the way, she samples reindeer stew in Scandinavia, retraces the original route of the Orient Express, sips on pisco sours aboard the Andean Explorer, and watches the sun rise over the Potomac River on the Silver Meteor to New York.
A decade ago night trains were giving way to budget airlines and high-speed rail. But as people search for slower and more environmentally friendly ways to travel, night trains are in the midst of a renaissance. By turns romantic and hilarious, Moonlight Express brings us along for the ride – and drops us back at the platform before sunrise.
A FINANCIAL TIMES READERS BOOK OF THE YEAR
From the author of the smash-hit Around the World in 80 Trains comes a new globetrotting journey - this time celebrating the peculiar magic and mayhem of the night train.
'Nobody writes trains like Monisha Rajesh' Irvine Welsh
'Hugely entertaining' The Times
'A moonlit express train to travel writing heaven. This is Monisha Rajesh's wittiest and most irresistible adventure yet' William Dalrymple
The wonder of the night train: headlamps ablaze, passengers boarding after sunset and leaving before sunrise, slipping in and out of compartments unseen. For Monisha Rajesh, the singular thrill of sleeper trains inspired a new journey around the world – one filled with moonlit landscapes, cosy compartments and quirky companions.
From Austria’s Nightjet to the Caledonian Sleeper and the Santa Claus Express, Rajesh invites us on an adventure aboard the world’s most wondrous night trains. Along the way, she samples reindeer stew in Scandinavia, retraces the original route of the Orient Express, sips on pisco sours aboard the Andean Explorer, and watches the sun rise over the Potomac River on the Silver Meteor to New York.
A decade ago night trains were giving way to budget airlines and high-speed rail. But as people search for slower and more environmentally friendly ways to travel, night trains are in the midst of a renaissance. By turns romantic and hilarious, Moonlight Express brings us along for the ride – and drops us back at the platform before sunrise.
Critics Review
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
A wonderful companion
Crackles and sparks with life like an exploding box of Diwali fireworks
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
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
A triumph: a rollicking account, full of memorable encounters and laced with wit
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
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