The Underground Railroad

"What if the Underground Railroad, rather than being a metaphor, had been a sooty, clanking reality running through a network of tunnels dug by enslaved people? That’s the premise of Colson Whitehead’s brilliant Underground Railroad, surely the novel of the year. As he did in his singular 1999 debut, The Intuitionist, Whitehead imagines an alternative past that hews close to historical facts, but also ingeniously riffs on them. The plot focuses on Cora, an escaped slave who takes a series of harrowing rides on the Underground Railroad, only to find herself traveling further away from freedom and deeper into the mystery of American racism."

"I've been saving "The Underground Railroad," by Colson Whitehead, in order to read it just before our event in New York City in February."

"Colson Whitehead's "The Underground Railroad" and Delia Owens's "Where the Crawdads Sing" were both very commercial and very literary."

""The Underground Railroad," Colson Whitehead"

"The last book whose originality of vision, power of language and thematic weight impressed me."