Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, this #1 New York Times bestseller chronicles a young slave’s adventures as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South. The basis for the acclaimed original Amazon Prime Video series directed by Barry Jenkins.Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. An outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is on the cusp … fellow Africans, she is on the cusp of womanhood—where greater pain awaits. And so when Caesar, a slave who has recently arrived from Virginia, urges her to join him on the Underground Railroad, she seizes the opportunity and escapes with him.
In Colson Whitehead’s ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor: engineers and conductors operate a secret network of actual tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora embarks on a harrowing flight from one state to the next, encountering, like Gulliver, strange yet familiar iterations of her own world at each stop.
As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the terrors of the antebellum era, he weaves in the saga of our nation, from the brutal abduction of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is both the gripping tale of one woman’s will to escape the horrors of bondage—and a powerful meditation on the history we all share.
Look for Colson Whitehead’s new novel, Harlem Shuffle!
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It was not at all realistic since the Underground Railroad was never a real railroad and it did not run underground !
The artistic use of an underground railroad may have allowed some readers to engage with this horrible era in our history, but to the naive reader who does not understand this element is a work of fiction, it could lead to misunderstandings of the realities of the time.
I like little known historical tales.
A stupendous achievement. Best book I read in 2017.
Our book club read this last year. We all enjoyed reading this book. The discussion was lively and we felt it gave us a greater appreciation for the slaves who risked their lives, but also for those who aided them.
A worthwhile read. Well-written. It took me a while to catch on to the fantasy aspect of the story. I should have paid more attention to the comments on the back cover. 😉
Realistic and horrifying look at slavery.
Great author!! Page turner! Excellent read!
Interesting take on the Underground Railroad. I enjoyed reading it.
Starts off so real and detailed…but then…
Parts were good
New perspective on age old subject
No idea details of underground railroad. This was well written description of part of our history.
Great insight to the lives of slates and the real personal struggles for freedom – both for Africans and those who fought against slabery in secret.
A good story but not a page turner.
The Underground Railroad was short-listed for the National Book Award–and boy, does it deserve it! Whitehead focuses mainly on the story of Cora, a slave born on a Georgia cotton plantation. He begins with a brief overview of her grandparents’ kidnapping from Africa and her mother Mabel’s escape, which occurred when Cora was only eight years old. Young Cora struggles to keep the tiny garden patch that her grandmother and mother handed down, but she soon finds herself living in Hob, the lodging for slave women rejected by the rest. The details of life on the Randall plantation, as witnessed by Cora, are as expected, horrific. Eventually, a slave named Caesar asks her to escape with him. When she later asks why he chose her, his answer is simple: “Because I knew that you could do it.”
The critics are all in wonderment over Whitehead’s creation of a literal underground railroad–not just a secret network of safe homes, but an actual railroad built underground to carry runaway slaves to safer places. It’s an interesting idea, but the real story, of course, is Cora’s will to survive, along with the suffering both she and her helpers sustain. I admit that I’m no expert in the topic, so I’m not sure how much of Whitehead’s depiction of the various states is based in fact. South Carolina, for example, was considered a progressive state in the novel because they provided cheap housing, literacy, and employment assistance for people of color; but they also pushed a program of sterilization onto young black women. North Carolina, according to Whitehead, “abolished” slavery by banishing blacks from the state, on pain of hanging, and by hiring cheap white labor to do the work of slaves; whites who harbored runaways were subject to the same punishment, carried out in public celebrations. Tennessee was a terrifying place running rampant with slave hunters. The relatively new state of Indiana was still in the throes of labor pains, unsure of how to handle large numbers of black settlers.
I’m not going to reveal any more of the plot. Let me just say that Whitehead has created an indomitable and believable character in Cora, and her story will suck you in. If the fact that this book is an Oprah selection turns you off, just black out that big O on the front cover and keep reading. (Honestly, I don’t get this snooty response, since many of her picks have been wonderful.) This one is a definite winner.
This book gave a horrifying look at the institution of slavery and the risks slave would take to escape their bondage. I really enjoyed the book.
Disappointing….I thought when I got it that it would be true to the Underground Railroad that ran from the south to the north, but it was built on a fictitious railroad rather than reality. The characters were often misconceiving…..just a big disappointment.
Pure magic–the prose is perfectly crafted.
It confused me, but it’s well-written.