First published 2025
The train to Paris carries passengers from across Europe and beyond on October 22, 1895. Parliamentary members race back to cast crucial votes. A medical student watches a young woman grow sicker by the hour. A secretary argues with her employer about the future of moving pictures. Two crew members steal moments together while hiding their affairs from their wives. An anarchist sits quietly, planning something terrible. The locomotive barrels toward Montparnasse station, packed with travelers from Brittany, Russia, Ireland, Algeria, Pennsylvania, and Cambodia. Each passenger carries their own urgent business, their own secrets, their own hopes for what awaits in the capital. But the train itself has become part of history, hurtling toward a catastrophe that photographers will capture in images both surreal and unforgettable. As the engine approaches the station, the lives of strangers interweave in the final moments before impact, revealing the politics, ambitions, and human connections that defined the closing years of the nineteenth century.
Genres: historical-fiction, 20th-century, adventure, 19th-century
Vibes: atmospheric, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: ensemble-cast, interconnected-stories
Setting: Paris, Montparnasse, Brittany, Russia, Ireland, Algeria, Pennsylvania, Cambodia
Period: 1895
288 pages · Hardcover · Picador