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Stamboul Train  By  cover art

Stamboul Train

By: Graham Greene
Narrated by: Michael Maloney
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Publisher's summary

Aboard the Orient Express as it heads across Europe towards Constantinople, a relationship develops between Carleton Myatt and Coral Musker, a naive English chorus girl. Around them a web of espionage, murder and lies twist in this spy thriller.
©1992 Graham Greene (P)2014 Audible, Inc.

What listeners say about Stamboul Train

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Poignance and Power on the Orient Express

With themes of sacrifice and betrayal Greene's Stamboul Train/Orient Express/Stamboul Express is able to provide a moving bio-dome of the human experience on this train headed to Constantinople. There is a definite reason trains are so often used in literature and film. The sealed quality, the movement, the modernity gives the writer room to experiment with characters and themes in a way that others settings would make difficult.

This isn't a major Greene novel. Greene definitely wrote better as he matured. But, for those who love Graham Greene's approach to literature and story-telling, this book is a must. Greene's characters are amazing in their capacity for love, sacfrice, betrayal and tragedy. That is what makes Greene's novels so compelling and his characters so beliveable.

Maloney does an admirable job at letting the novel speak for itself. He illuminates the text without distracting the reader from it.

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21 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Not Exactly a Whodunit

I love reading (listening to) Greene. This is not really a 'spy thriller' as suggested by the "Publisher's Summary". It is a story about characters ranged on a spectrum of moral ambiguity; how they think and behave; and the consequences. The mystery is trying to guess where on the spectrum each character lies. Greene ties all strands as expected, but not, I think, as the reader might have chosen.

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15 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

A classic story wonderfully read

A story by Graham Greene that reminds us why he is regarded as a master story teller. The narration by Michael Maloney is superb--he does a wide array of voices with perfect pitch.

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9 people found this helpful

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Warning: Anti Semitic Content

What would have made Stamboul Train better?

While this book performs well as something to be read aloud, readers should know, before proceeding, of a substantial amount of anti-semitic content.

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Not one of his best

Greene has produced much better than this. The story is initially very promising with outstanding character descriptions leading to a climax in a snowy border town. It has all the makings of a great thriller, but in the end it is as if the author's inspiration deserts him and he wraps the whole thing up in a few paragraphs that are unsatisfying and inconclusive. The ending betrays the characters who have been constructed so carefully throughout the book. Good narration.

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Great thriller from the 30's

I loved this book, and the narration. It gives you a good feel for Europe in the late 20's and early 30's.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

first rate listen!

This was a very satisfying "read", well written and very well read. Worth it -

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Do not pass it up

One of his early works Greene said "In Stamboul Train for the first and last time in my life I deliberately set out to write a book to please, one which with luck might be made into a film. The devil looks after his own and I succeeded in both aims". Very well read, this is great reason to listen to books.

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4 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Not one of Graham Greene's best

Any additional comments?

Let's face it, Graham Greene is one of the best writers of the 20th Century. Not one of his best books still puts it miles above most other books. I personally liked "The Comedians" best, although there are many other excellent ones. This book didn't have the depth of his other books and while being very good and quite interesting and entertaining didn't leave me thinking much about it after I finished listening. I believe any Greene book is worth the listen, but this shouldn't be your first.

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3 people found this helpful

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

An unfocused ‘entertainment’

Apart from the train heading to Stamboul, this is a rambling and unfocused narrative by Greene. It had some entertaining and intriguing parts, but lacked the driving tension of adversity to be overcome that other Greene novels have. If you like character-driven stories, tragi-comedy or exaggerated voicing, then you may like this novel, which Greene calls an entertainment, but which I returned.

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2 people found this helpful