![]() ![]() This is a book that wears its research lightly, but the subtly antique prose and detailed description combine to create a world that is entirely convincing. First, it draws on traditional slave testimonies by the likes of Solomon Northup and Harriet Jacobs. This beginning of the novel strikes two clear chords. We meet her daughter, Mabel, who flees the plantation and its odious owner, Randall, prompting a wild and fruitless search, and Cora, Mabel’s daughter, our heroine.Ĭora and Caesar are led down to a platform where rails stretch away into darkness. Every dream a dream of escape even when it didn’t look like it.” We meet Ajarry, taken from her West African village and across the ocean on a slave ship. ![]() In the morning and in the afternoon and in the night. The Underground Railroad begins on a particularly vicious Georgia plantation, where all anyone wants to do is escape. Bringing this brutal, vital, devastating novel to a wider audience (it has also been selected by Oprah’s book club) will not be the least of Obama’s legacies. His 2016 summer holiday reading – released by the White House’s press department – not only included Helen Macdonald’s sublime H Is for Hawk, but also Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad. A s if we needed any more reason to mourn the passing of Barack Obama’s presidency, it’s difficult to believe that either of his potential successors will share his fine taste in books. ![]()
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