KYOTO: Sixteen writers -half Frenchspeaking and half Japanese boarded a luxury train in Kyoto on Thursday, faced with the unusual task of collectively writing a novel in under 24 hours.

The authors, who include Muriel Barbery, are taking part in a project by `L`ecriture en mouvement` `Writing in Motion` a French association that promotes literary exchanges.

By the time the `Mizukaze` their striking, bottle-green train in the Art Deco style pulls into the western city of Matsue on Friday morning, they hope to have completed a 200-page story. `It`s a completely crazy project: coming together on an iconic train, where 16 voices must form a coherent and meaningful whole,` said Barbery, famous in the English-speaking world primarily forher 2006 novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog.

`We were each given the biography of a character someone whom all the other characters knew, and who is the reason why they all ended up on the same train,` she added. It is the second time Writing in Motion has orchestrated such a project.

The first, held in Canada in 2015, also unitedlocalwriterswith French counterparts. The central theme and overall narrative were discussed before departure, but the plot-set aboard the `Mizukaze` itself will take shape as the journey unfolds. The landscape outside, dotted with paddy fields and Japan`s distinctive architecture, `will inevitably find its way` into the writing, said French writer Christophe Ono-dit-Biot.-AFP