The Underground Railroad és una novel·la sobre el museu dels horrors que va ser la esclavitud en el segle XIX. El llibre conta la història de Cora, una jove esclava. La seva mare fuig de la plantació on treballen totes dues. Abandonada per la seva mare i odiada per la resta de la comunitat, ella també decideix fugir. Decideix agafar el ferrocarril subterrani. En el segle XIX, aquest era el nom metafòric donat a una organització clandestina que ajudava als esclaus a fugir dels estats del sud, però en la novel·la, Whitehead converteix aquest símbol en una cosa real: es un tren al que puja Cora per escapar-se de la esclavitud. La novel·la, escollida entre 400 daltres, ja era un gran èxit als Estats Units, abans de guanyar el National Book Award: havia estat el llibre més venut del New York Times.
Praised by Barack Obama and an Oprah Book Club Pick, The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead won the National Book Award 2016 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2017.
Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. 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. When Caesar, a slave recently arrived from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they take the perilous decision to escape to the North.
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. Cora and Caesar's first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But its placid surface masks an infernal scheme designed for its unknowing black inhabitants. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher sent to find Cora, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.
At each stop on her journey, Cora encounters a different world. 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. 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.
