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

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.