'An engrossing and harrowing novel' - The Sunday Times Whitehead is on a roll, the reviews have been sublime' - Bim Adewunmi, The Guardian Each character feels alive with a singular humanity. 'It has invaded both my sleeping and waking thoughts. 'This is a luminous, furious, wildly inventive tale that not only shines a bright light on one of the darkest periods of history, but also opens up thrilling new vistas for the form of the novel itself.' - The Observer Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group ISBN: 9780708898406 Number of pages: 400 Weight: 320 g Dimensions: 196 x 127 x 26 mm MEDIA REVIEWS The Underground Railroad is at once the story of one woman's ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shatteringly powerful meditation on history. 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. At 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.įorced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom. 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. There was only darkness outside the windows on her journeys, and only ever would be darkness.Ĭora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Look outside as you speed through, and you’ll find the true face of America. If you want to see what this nation is all about, you have to ride the rails. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2017 Waterstones Fiction Book of the Month for July (2017)
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