Join a book club that is reading The Underground Railroad: A Novel!
The Underground Railroad: A Novel
Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - PULITZER PRIZE WINNER - NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER - "An American masterpiece" (NPR) that 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 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, Crook Manifesto!
Show more
BUY THE BOOK
Community Reviews
The brutality of slavery told through the voice of young woman’s harrowing journey. Compelling reading despite the difficult content. He is a wonderful author.
Content warning for enslavement, violence, on-page and referenced sexual abuse, manipulation, medical abuse, and related topics. The premise is amazing. The historical Underground Railroad reimagined as a real railroad with tracks and engineers and trains. I liked the characters, especially Cora. Her detached voice worked for me, especially with her frankness. I would have liked to see more in the background characters. I liked the ending too. Us...read more
I was a bit disappointed with the creative writing style on the plot of the main character running away from the slavery life to freedom. I felt like between the back stories that didn't really related or give other insight to the characters, and the side stories of other characters, this book fell flat. For a piece of fiction of a historical movement, the author used their period to instead write a modern day flight from the law. When the author...read more
See why thousands of readers are using Bookclubs to stay connected.