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The Underground Railroad

By: Colson Whitehead
Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
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Publisher's Summary

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 2017

National Book Award Winner 2016

Amazon.Com Number One Book of the Year 2016

Number One New York Times Best Seller

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 boxcar 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.

©2016 Colson Whitehead (P)2016 Little Brown Book Group

Critic Reviews

"Whitehead is on a roll: the reviews have been sublime." ( The Guardian)
"Luminous, furious, wildly inventive." ( The Observer)
"Hands down one of the best, if not the best, book I've read this year." ( Stylist)
"Dazzling." ( New York Review of Books)

What listeners say about The Underground Railroad

Average Customer Ratings
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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Great research from the author

The theme is not one of my favourites but I decided to give it a try given the awards the book got in 2016.

My favourite phrase is on chapter 91- very strong statement and sadly true, and it continues to happen to this day in many parts of the World.

Whilst the story is nothing new to me, it serves as the conductor to show the amazing research that the author had to do to be so specific and detailed, narrating the events and the facts that this book shows about this part of the United States history. Very interesting and confronting. Congratulations to the author for the incredible investigative work.

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4 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Couldn't get into it

I could not really get into this book. There was not anything particularly wrong with it, i just got bored and distracted.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Excellent!

Initially wasn’t keen to listen to this book as thought it would be too harrowing. I’m really glad that I did as loved it and could not stop listening to find out what happens to the brave Cora and the people she encounters on her journey. It’s fast paced, beautifully written and superbly read in the mesmerising voice of the narrator who made me feel completely absorbed in the story.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Like a fruitcake without much fruit

I think this could have been a rich and moving story. The author jumped around a bit which made it a little hard to follow at times. Very little dimension to the characters, even the main ones. I realised halfway through the book the characters still felt like strangers and I didn't really care about them. One of the main characters barely gets a mention as to what became of him and that isn't until nearly the end of the book. I struggled till close to the end and then just gave up. This book is just not very engaging.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Captivating

I loved this book from start to finish. I enjoyed the performance and the content brought the horrors of slavery into sharp focus.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

exceptional!

No one is truly free untill we all are...
A must read to even slightly understand the history of colour.
Colson you're an angel

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2 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Wow eye-opening view into American history

This book opened my eyes to the nature of America's dark history. It made the atrocity of the slave trade real, the universal atrocity and the devastation on individuals. The story took many unexpected turns following Cora, the heroine. I liked how it showed the humanity and hardness of different characters, both slave and white, to show blurry lines between good and bad and complexity of people who all believe they're doing the right thing.
Narrator's various voices made it hard to believe the same person was reading the different characters. an amazing performance.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Incredibly moving

Whitehead has written a powerful story, and it is vividly narrated by Bahni Turpin. Highly recommended to

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

powerful story

very well told story and actually an insight into the core of American society

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Exceptional

The narrator gave an incredible performance to the story. In parts very disturbing, but overall captured a time in history that needed to be written as it was.

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1 person found this helpful

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