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

Christian House, The Times

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

Christian Wolmar, Spectator

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

Shafik Meghji, Geographical Magazine

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

Jason Goodwin, Country Life

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

Shawn Hoo, Straits Times

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

IRVINE WELSH, author of Trainspotting