The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By (Romans Durs)

by Georges Simenon, Siân Reynolds (Translator)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250425911
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	06/23/2026
Series:	Romans Durs
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.50(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Georges Simenon (1903–1989) was born in Liège, Belgium. An intrepid traveler with a profound interest in people, Simenon strove on and off the page to understand—and not to judge—the human condition in all its shades. His books include the Inspector Maigret series and a richly varied body of wider work united by its evocative power, its economy of means, and its penetrating psychological insight. He is among the most widely read writers in the global canon.

Siân Reynolds was born in Cardiff, and taught at both the University of Sussex and the University of Edinburgh before serving as chair of French at the University of Stirling from 1990 to 2004. She has translated numerous books from the French, both fiction and nonfiction, including works by the crime writer Fred Vargas.