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Orient Express (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
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Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Author: Graham Greene
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Average Customer Rating:
Our Price: $10.20
You Save: $ 4.80 ( 32% )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Author: Graham Greene
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Average Customer Rating:
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Orient Express (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9780142437919
ISBN: 0142437913
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 224
Publication Date: 2004-08-31
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Product Release Date: 2004-09-28
Studio: Penguin Classics
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9780142437919
ISBN: 0142437913
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 224
Publication Date: 2004-08-31
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Product Release Date: 2004-09-28
Studio: Penguin Classics
Editorial Review of Orient Express (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
Customer Reviews of Orient Express (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Time Capsule of a lost era
Review: Orient Express is a time capsule. It was written in the early 1930s and, as such, captures the world of the inter-war period in continental Europe. The book's strengths and weaknesses spring from this perspective. The strength are that Greene shows us a world that was rather bleak and yet vibrant. The downside is that anti-Semitism and class-based prejudices are evident both in the character's and in Greene's attitudes. However, as a time capsule of a lost era, this book is worth reading.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Disappointment in a microcosmos
Review: Of course far from his masterworks, this novel is still better than most which plague the bestsellers lists today. It is one of the first novels written by Greene, on of which he calls "entertainments", to distinguish them from his more serious novels. Nevertheless, here in an early work his recurrent subjects loom already: hope and regret; the moral loneliness of each individual; the inevitability of fate; the consciousness, or lack of it, of good and evil.
A group of people are travelling from Ostende (Belgium) to Istanbul, each one with their fears or illusions. During the long way they meet and interact, love and forget each other. Carleton Myatt, a young Jewish merchant, is on his way to solve a problematic business situation with his employees in Turkey. During the trip he meets and seduces (through kindness and sacrifice) a young starlet of nightclubs who only dreams of love and welfare. Dr. Czinner (sinner?) a socialist revolutionary from Yugoslavia, is on the same train bound for Belgrade, but he is discovered and harassed by Mabel Warren, a British, alcoholic and lesbian journalist. The interaction between the characters creates an increasing tension which is only resolved, for good or evil, when each one of them meets his or her particular fate. Foremost is the heartbreaking story of the young dancer, who loses love in the middle of a snowstorm and political intrigue of which she understands nothing. In this book, Greene lets us see the great qualities that would later lead him to write his great novels.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Not Greene's best work
Review: I have enjoyed a number of Greene's novels, but was disappointed with Orient Express. For a better read and more compelling characters, I recommend Greene's later work including The Quite American, The Comedians or even The Heart of the Matter.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Train Wreck
Review: I find Graham Greene to be almost unreadable. I know that this is going to be considered near blasphemous, since literary critics have heaped such praise upon him and so many reviewers here have done likewise.
However, in a word, I find him depressing. His characters suffer from interminable analysis of their every thought and action. The larger story is merely a vehicle for these internal monologues that, frankly, I don't find particularly insightful or interesting. It was V. S. Pritchett who first remarked about Greene's 'perverse and morbid tendencies'. While Greene is no doubt highly intelligent and capable of a very high level of writing, the end result, for me, is something very unpleasant.
I first read 'The Heart Of The Matter'. God, what an endlessly depressing scene! Nor was there any particular character I could sympathize with or even care about. In spite of my negative reaction to this highly praised work, I thought I would give him another try with 'Orient Express' (a.k.a., 'Stamboul Train'), thinking that in this 'entertainment' as Greene called it I would actually be, well, entertained. Instead, I get a trainload of depressing characters whose every thought is scrutinized to an excruciating degree.
Example (from Myatt's suspicions about his business dealings):
'It was odd. He had chosen the samples with particular care. It was natural of course that even Stein's currants should not all be inferior, but when so much was suspected, a further suspicion was easy. Suppose, for example, Mr. Eckman had been doing a little trade on his own account, had allowed Stein some of the firm's consignment of currants, in order temporarily to raise the quality, had, on the grounds of that improved quality, indeed, induced Moults' to bid for the business. Mr. Eckman must be having uneasy moments now, turning up the time-table, looking at his watch, thinking that half Myatt's journey was over. Tomorrow, he thought, I will send a telegram and put Joyce in charge; Mr. Eckman shall have a month's holiday. Joyce will keep an eye on the books, and he pictured the scurrying to and fro, as in an ants' nest agitated by a man's foot, a telephone call from Eckman to Stein or from Stein to Eckman, a taxi ordered here and dismissed there, a lunch for once without wine, and then the steep office steps and at the top of them the faithful rather stupid Joyce keeping his eye upon the books. And all the time, at the modern flat, Mrs. Eckman would sit on her steel sofa knitting baby clothes for the Anglican mission, and the great dingy Bible, Mr. Eckman's first deception, would gather dust on its unturned leaf.'
Lord have mercy. This stuff is like fingernails on a chalkboard!
William Golding called Green 'the ultimate twentieth-century chronicler of consciousness and anxiety'. This does not, however, make for entertaining reading. Greene's writing is an examination of the human condition totally devoid of lightness, humor (at least as I understand the word) or romance. His characters are an unpleasant, unhappy bunch.
Ultimately all his writing reveals is the real Graham Greene.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Everyday existence found at the bottom of suitcase
Review: ORIENT EXPRESS differentiates from other Graham Greene's works, which are normally considered literary fiction of a serious writer, in its entertaining nature. It reads like an adventurous story whose every little detail exuded demands one's undivided attention in order to piece it all together. As the Orient Express hurtles across Europe on its three-day journey from Ostend to Constantinople, the driven lives of several of its passengers become bound together in a fateful interlock. The curious skein of characters include a beautiful chorus girl enroute to a performance, a rich Jewish businessman bound for a business deal, a mysterious, sinister-looking but kind doctor returning to his native Belgrade after being fugitive for five years, a cunning murderous burglar who had fled a crime, and a spiteful journalist who contrived to make the headline story.
Given the nature of these various characters and a backdrop that constitutes to a curious sense of suspension in a confined, onrushing train, ORIENT EXPRESS, though a less literary work, does not fail to combine the exotic and the romantic with the sordid and the banal. These passengers, who have little or nothing in common with one another that they will probably never overlap have they not been assigned in the same car, retain their own life drama, conditions and secrets under the changing skies. The meanness of everyday existence is found at the bottom of every suitcase, and has in fact been packed along with everything else.
It doesn't seem obvious at first that ORIENT EXPRESS bespeaks self-sacrifice and betrayal. It is the usual case when people are far from home and routine that they will stair to make an unwonted exertion of the spirit or the will. The book, though its contrariety of style to Greene's other works, turns out to be a useful if not fortunate failure in containing the themes of self-sacrifice and betrayal. It is almost unexpected that the train, the passengers, and the direction to which the train steered symbolize a time period and the revolution.
Review Summary: Time Capsule of a lost era
Review: Orient Express is a time capsule. It was written in the early 1930s and, as such, captures the world of the inter-war period in continental Europe. The book's strengths and weaknesses spring from this perspective. The strength are that Greene shows us a world that was rather bleak and yet vibrant. The downside is that anti-Semitism and class-based prejudices are evident both in the character's and in Greene's attitudes. However, as a time capsule of a lost era, this book is worth reading.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Disappointment in a microcosmos
Review: Of course far from his masterworks, this novel is still better than most which plague the bestsellers lists today. It is one of the first novels written by Greene, on of which he calls "entertainments", to distinguish them from his more serious novels. Nevertheless, here in an early work his recurrent subjects loom already: hope and regret; the moral loneliness of each individual; the inevitability of fate; the consciousness, or lack of it, of good and evil.
A group of people are travelling from Ostende (Belgium) to Istanbul, each one with their fears or illusions. During the long way they meet and interact, love and forget each other. Carleton Myatt, a young Jewish merchant, is on his way to solve a problematic business situation with his employees in Turkey. During the trip he meets and seduces (through kindness and sacrifice) a young starlet of nightclubs who only dreams of love and welfare. Dr. Czinner (sinner?) a socialist revolutionary from Yugoslavia, is on the same train bound for Belgrade, but he is discovered and harassed by Mabel Warren, a British, alcoholic and lesbian journalist. The interaction between the characters creates an increasing tension which is only resolved, for good or evil, when each one of them meets his or her particular fate. Foremost is the heartbreaking story of the young dancer, who loses love in the middle of a snowstorm and political intrigue of which she understands nothing. In this book, Greene lets us see the great qualities that would later lead him to write his great novels.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Not Greene's best work
Review: I have enjoyed a number of Greene's novels, but was disappointed with Orient Express. For a better read and more compelling characters, I recommend Greene's later work including The Quite American, The Comedians or even The Heart of the Matter.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Train Wreck
Review: I find Graham Greene to be almost unreadable. I know that this is going to be considered near blasphemous, since literary critics have heaped such praise upon him and so many reviewers here have done likewise.
However, in a word, I find him depressing. His characters suffer from interminable analysis of their every thought and action. The larger story is merely a vehicle for these internal monologues that, frankly, I don't find particularly insightful or interesting. It was V. S. Pritchett who first remarked about Greene's 'perverse and morbid tendencies'. While Greene is no doubt highly intelligent and capable of a very high level of writing, the end result, for me, is something very unpleasant.
I first read 'The Heart Of The Matter'. God, what an endlessly depressing scene! Nor was there any particular character I could sympathize with or even care about. In spite of my negative reaction to this highly praised work, I thought I would give him another try with 'Orient Express' (a.k.a., 'Stamboul Train'), thinking that in this 'entertainment' as Greene called it I would actually be, well, entertained. Instead, I get a trainload of depressing characters whose every thought is scrutinized to an excruciating degree.
Example (from Myatt's suspicions about his business dealings):
'It was odd. He had chosen the samples with particular care. It was natural of course that even Stein's currants should not all be inferior, but when so much was suspected, a further suspicion was easy. Suppose, for example, Mr. Eckman had been doing a little trade on his own account, had allowed Stein some of the firm's consignment of currants, in order temporarily to raise the quality, had, on the grounds of that improved quality, indeed, induced Moults' to bid for the business. Mr. Eckman must be having uneasy moments now, turning up the time-table, looking at his watch, thinking that half Myatt's journey was over. Tomorrow, he thought, I will send a telegram and put Joyce in charge; Mr. Eckman shall have a month's holiday. Joyce will keep an eye on the books, and he pictured the scurrying to and fro, as in an ants' nest agitated by a man's foot, a telephone call from Eckman to Stein or from Stein to Eckman, a taxi ordered here and dismissed there, a lunch for once without wine, and then the steep office steps and at the top of them the faithful rather stupid Joyce keeping his eye upon the books. And all the time, at the modern flat, Mrs. Eckman would sit on her steel sofa knitting baby clothes for the Anglican mission, and the great dingy Bible, Mr. Eckman's first deception, would gather dust on its unturned leaf.'
Lord have mercy. This stuff is like fingernails on a chalkboard!
William Golding called Green 'the ultimate twentieth-century chronicler of consciousness and anxiety'. This does not, however, make for entertaining reading. Greene's writing is an examination of the human condition totally devoid of lightness, humor (at least as I understand the word) or romance. His characters are an unpleasant, unhappy bunch.
Ultimately all his writing reveals is the real Graham Greene.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Everyday existence found at the bottom of suitcase
Review: ORIENT EXPRESS differentiates from other Graham Greene's works, which are normally considered literary fiction of a serious writer, in its entertaining nature. It reads like an adventurous story whose every little detail exuded demands one's undivided attention in order to piece it all together. As the Orient Express hurtles across Europe on its three-day journey from Ostend to Constantinople, the driven lives of several of its passengers become bound together in a fateful interlock. The curious skein of characters include a beautiful chorus girl enroute to a performance, a rich Jewish businessman bound for a business deal, a mysterious, sinister-looking but kind doctor returning to his native Belgrade after being fugitive for five years, a cunning murderous burglar who had fled a crime, and a spiteful journalist who contrived to make the headline story.
Given the nature of these various characters and a backdrop that constitutes to a curious sense of suspension in a confined, onrushing train, ORIENT EXPRESS, though a less literary work, does not fail to combine the exotic and the romantic with the sordid and the banal. These passengers, who have little or nothing in common with one another that they will probably never overlap have they not been assigned in the same car, retain their own life drama, conditions and secrets under the changing skies. The meanness of everyday existence is found at the bottom of every suitcase, and has in fact been packed along with everything else.
It doesn't seem obvious at first that ORIENT EXPRESS bespeaks self-sacrifice and betrayal. It is the usual case when people are far from home and routine that they will stair to make an unwonted exertion of the spirit or the will. The book, though its contrariety of style to Greene's other works, turns out to be a useful if not fortunate failure in containing the themes of self-sacrifice and betrayal. It is almost unexpected that the train, the passengers, and the direction to which the train steered symbolize a time period and the revolution.