In this outing, Rajesh highlights the sleeper train, where passengers book berths to sleep in, boarding in one city and waking up in another.
Structured according to Rajesh’s "bucket list" of night trains, the book’s first few chapters trace the journey of the Orient Express, before hopping from train to train in each chapter.
Moonlight Express is a personable travelogue told from Rajesh’s standpoint as a mother, a woman of colour, a university educated person, an Englishwoman, and an unabashed lover of trains and people.
In Rajesh’s account, trains create a temporary, tight-knit community on wheels. Consequently, one of the pleasures of this book is Rajesh’s thumbnail sketches, giving us the voyeuristic thrill of the film Rear Window. Sometimes she literally looks out her train window into someone else’s.
Another of this book’s pleasures is Rajesh’s eye for detail in setting and culture. In a Turkish market she sees "boxes of anchovies as slim and bright as burning magnesium ribbon"; while Norway’s Mjosa lake "appear[s] like a piece of silk in the gloam".
Different chapters allow Rajesh to explore different themes.
The Good Night Train between Brussels and Berlin allows Rajesh to talk about racism, particularly in relation to the monstrous trains of World War 2 that took Jews to concentration camps.
The theme of social justice becomes increasingly obvious in the last few chapters, especially as related to the war in Gaza, which was unfurling at the time of Rajesh’s train trips.
