It has been translated into English multiple times: by Stuart Gilbert (Routledge, 1942); by Marc Romano and D. Thin (New York Review Books, 2005); and by Siân Reynolds (Penguin, 2017).

Kees Popinga, a quiet, respectable Dutchman working as head clerk in Groningen becomes increasingly unhinged after discovering that his cynical employer has looted and ruined his firm and confides in him that he will fake a suicide in order to escape punishment.

Soon the man becomes more and more delusional, seeing himself as a master criminal and certain that the woman he has become involved with, a prostitute named Jeanne Rozier, is genuinely interested in him, rather than in her pimp/boyfriend, Louis.

He wanders the streets of Paris and its outskirts, staying in cheap hotels with prostitutes by night, until a pickpocket steals his wallet containing all the money he has left.

The book was adapted for the screen in 1952 as The Man Who Watched Trains Go By, starring Claude Rains and Märta Torén and directed by Harold French.