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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loved it
Very graphic and hard to read. Informative. Eye opening. Everyone should read it.
Redundant.
After all the rave reviews, this was such a disappointment! The story was ludicrous and seemed to take the known tragic era lightly. It is far better to read The Warmth of Other Suns to get real migration of blacks story!
Enthralling and well-written, but I think it went too far in adding horrific fictional events to an already horrifying true history of our country’s past.
Great historical story.
Everyone should read this book. So imaginative. So heart-rending.
This would have been a 5-star book but when I got to the end, it felt unfinished,like the final chapter had been omitted.
one of those books that stays with you long after you’ve read it.
I loved this book. It is the best I’ve read about the underground railway.
couldn’t connect with characters.
This was not a book that I liked. It was however a different take on the underground railroad.
Interesting allegory
Tedious and unrealistic
This started off well, but as the story progressed, it seemed the author tried to cram his underlining beliefs into the book in a flurry. It became disjointed and chaotic. The subject matter is what drew me, but I was disappointed with the book because of these reasons.
Different twist on Underground Railroad.
Ridiculous!
Although the author mixes pure fiction with the historical reality of slavery in the United States, the effect makes the reader better able to grasp the horrors of life in the Deep South for people of color. I would highly recommend this book.
I know this is supposed to be a “great” book, but really, portraying the underground railroad as a real live train underground? American students are already lacking in knowledge of our history, do we need to feed them a lie within the setting of truth?
Good book.but I didn’t like how it ended abruptly. I needed more closure.