The Underground Railroad

by Whitehead, Colson
ISBN: 9780345804327
4.3 (3)
Availability:
$8.49
Used - Trade Paperback - 9780345804327

Available Offers

Ship to HPB West Lane Avenue Out of stock at HPB West Lane Avenue Check other stores
$1.99 - Ready for pickup Apr 11 - 14
Ship to Me
$3.99 - Get it Apr 11 - 14

Overview

#1 New York Times Bestseller
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
Winner of the National Book Award
Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize

One of the Best books of the Year: The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, The Boston Globe, The Seattle Times, HuffPost, Esquire, Minneapolis Star Tribune

Cora is a young 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.

  • Format: TradePaperback
  • Author: Whitehead, Colson
  • ISBN: 9780345804327
  • Condition: Used
  • Dimensions: 7.95 x 0.70
  • Number Of Pages: 336
  • Publication Year: 2018

Customer Reviews

Rating Snapshot

5 ★   33%
4 ★   67%
3 ★   0%
2 ★   0%
1 ★   0%
4.3
3 Ratings

0

0% Would Recommend
0 Recommendations

Review Images

Sort by:
Filter by:

  • Two slaves try seek freedom via the Underground Railroad

    Kaitlyn J. - 7 months ago

    This was a book that put me through a rollercoaster of emotions. The way the author describes the very real experiences that slaves had to endure during that time, was unforgiving and unrelenting. More than a few times I had to put the book down to collect myself. That being said, the characters who are trying to escape from that life are desperate, fierce and courageous. Their courage to continue on to freedom was inspiring and kept me rooting for them until the very end.

    HPB Staff Review

  • An enthralling blend of fantasy and historical fiction.

    Luke G. - 2 years 3 months ago

    Colson Whitehead's sixth novel blends frightening historical fiction and inspiring fantasy to take us through a journey of two runaway slaves on a break for freedom. We follow protagonist Cora and her companion, Caesar, as they flee the horrors of slavery in the Georgia cotton fields aboard the Underground Railroad. Only this isn't the Underground Railroad of our history textbooks, but a literal subterranean railway that travels a maze of corridors to reach the freedom of the North. Along the way, Cora and Caesar meet many obstacles and deceptions, including one of the most truly terrifying antagonists of modern fiction, the slave catcher known as Ridgeway. A gripping and emotion novel that should be included on any list of current reads, this book uses the horrors of the past to tell a fantastic story that is incredibly relatable to the present. Colson Whitehead has crafted a truly riveting narrative that will stick with you long after you put it down.

    HPB Staff Review

  • Powerful prose, rich historical references & an unforgettable reimagined tale of a slave girl's jour

    Becky G. - 5 years 5 months ago

    The only way to know how long you were lost in the darkness is to be saved from it. Cora, a slave in the early 1800s with a legacy passed along by her mother who escaped the Randall Plantation and left her behind, is our storied heroine in this, Colson Whiteheads August 2016 release. So much awaited was this new novel by Whitehead that the release date was bumped up a full month and it was chosen as a coveted Oprahs Book Club selection. To say that the story of Coras life in slavery and subsequent escape was riveting would be an understatement. Whitehead imagines an Underground Railroad as an actual railway with a real locomotive that flees through the night on haphazard scheduling, bringing escaped slaves to the beginnings of freedom. What we realize through Coras story, is that freedom is a long time coming and sometimes, even those who seem sympathetic, are not. Whitehead attempts to address so many issues in the early 19th century black slave experience, from breeding to evaluating the monetary value of slaves, to rape and lynching, even a horrifying tale of involuntary birth control to limit the population of freed blacks. As she runs further to escape such strife the railroad leads Cora and those she meets along a journey from the horrific to the tragic. Told in the third person, we examine Coras experience along her route and make some assumptions about the extent of her emotional journey and thought processes, those of a young, black woman with her first glimpses of an unjust world. She must hide her identity to protect herself from the bounty hunters on her trail and sometimes I found it scary to turn the page for fear of who or what she might encounter next as I was gripped with the realization that so many real people, attempting a freedom of their own, did not get near as far. Whitehead allows us to listen to the backstories and historical ugliness used to justify what made slavery possible in our history and that is the truth that can linger from this telling. Coras story will stick with me, there will be moments when I consider my own freedoms that I think of her journey forever. Whiteheads novel requires careful study, as I found myself having to re-read a few paragraphs to allow the story and beautiful prose to really soak in, but in the midst he pieces together the harrowing account of so many artfully crafted around the fictional Cora.

    HPB Staff Review