The Underground Railroad

WINNER OF THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION

Cora is a young slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. An outcast even among her 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 Southern soil. Cora continues her harrowing flight state by state, 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 the gripping tale of one woman's will to escape the horrors of bondage –and a powerful meditation on the history we all share.

"The Underground Railroad is inquiring into the very soul of American democracy... A stirring exploration of the American experiment." – The Wall Street Journal 

"Potent... Devastating... A story essential to our understanding of the American past and the American present." – The New York Times 

"The Underground Railroad is a noble descendant of the great narratives of slavery, and among the very finest of its novels." – The Times Literary Supplement (London)

Author: Colson Whitehead

Publisher: Anchor

Released Date: 2016

ISBN: 9780525435709