The Underground Railroad: A Novel (Random House Large Print)
Description
1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
WINNER • A magnificent tour de force chronicling a young slave’s adventures as
she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South. • Now an
original Amazon Prime Video series directed by Barry Jenkins. 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. Look for Colson Whitehead’s new novel,
Crook Manifesto, coming soon! Read more
Features:
Product Details:
- Publisher : Random House Large Print; Large type / Large print edition (August 2, 2016)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 432 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9
- ISBN-13 : 09
- Item Weight : 1 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.14 x 0.96 x 9.2 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,040,967 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #947 in Black & African American Historical Fiction (Books) #43,138 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- #947 in Black & African American Historical Fiction (Books)