Colson Whitehead, "The Underground Railroad"

In his sixth novel—the latest Oprah’s Book Club pick—Whitehead recreates the brutal antebellum south, following Cora as she escapes from slavery on a Georgia cotton plantation, killing a young white man in the process, and heads for freedom somewhere up north. In this mesmerizing reimagining by the award-winning author of The Intuitionist and John Henry Days, however, the Underground Railroad is exactly that: a network of tracks and tunnels built below the ground. While parts of it seem like a true refuge, other places are rife with slave-catchers and other, more insidious threats. Part adventure, part history, and part meditation on the meaning of “freedom,” Whitehead’s novel is very much a portrait of today’s America.

Whitehead will be in conversation with WAMU reporter Jonathan Wilson.

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