As Whitehead brilliantly recreates the unique terrors for black people in the pre-Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America, from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.Īt each stop on her journey, Cora encounters a different world. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher sent to find Cora, is close on their heels. But its placid surface masks an infernal scheme designed for its unknowing black inhabitants.

Cora and Caesar's first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. In Whitehead's razor-sharp imagining of the antebellum South, the Underground Railroad has assumed a physical form: a dilapidated box car pulled along subterranean tracks by a steam locomotive, picking up fugitives wherever it can. When Caesar, a slave recently arrived from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they take the perilous decision to escape to the North. All the slaves lead a hellish existence, but Cora has it worse than most she is an outcast even among her fellow Africans and she is approaching womanhood, where it is clear even greater pain awaits. Praised by Barack Obama and an Oprah Book Club Pick, THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD by Colson Whitehead won the National Book Award 2016 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2017.Ĭora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION 2017

The underground railroad 2016