The Underground Railroad The Underground Railroad

The Underground Railroad‪ ‬

A Novel

    • 4.3 • 3.3K Ratings
    • $11.99
    • $11.99

Publisher Description

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, the #1 New York Times bestseller from Colson Whitehead, a magnificent tour de force chronicling a young slave's adventures as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South

Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood—where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned—Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted.
     In Whitehead’s ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor—engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora and Caesar’s first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city’s placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.
     Like the protagonist of Gulliver’s Travels, Cora encounters different worlds at each stage of her journey—hers is an odyssey through time as well as space. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates 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. The Underground Railroad is at once a kinetic adventure tale of one woman’s ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shattering, powerful meditation on the history we all share.

GENRE
Fiction & Literature
RELEASED
2016
August 2
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
320
Pages
PUBLISHER
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
SELLER
Penguin Random House LLC
SIZE
5.8
MB

Customer Reviews

smwalters ,

Great book

I enjoyed this book. I knew it was a historical fiction so didn't have an issue with the literary license taken with regards to the Underground Railroad. Enjoyable summer read.

shoepershopper ,

Great read

Thank you for a great read. I haven't realized how much I enjoy historical fiction until this year. Add this book, along with Nightingale, to your "must read because it puts you in the moment while you hold your breath" books.

Arttalk ,

The underground Railroad

A beautifully written book. Highly recommended if you want to read fine literature.

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