The Underground Railroad

Resumen del libro

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.

Biografía del autor

x{0026}lt;P x{0026}lt;B Colson Whiteheadx{0026}lt;/B nació en 1969 en Nueva York. Finalista del PEN/Hemingway con su primera novela, x{0026}lt;I La intuicionistax{0026}lt;/I (2000), ha publicado media docena de novelas y el libro x{0026}lt;I El coloso de Nueva Yorkx{0026}lt;/I (2005). Fue finalista del Premio Pulitzer con x{0026}lt;I John Henry Daysx{0026}lt;/I (2011), finalista del PEN/Oakland Award con x{0026}lt;I Apex Hides the Hurtx{0026}lt;/I (2006) y del PEN/Faulkner con x{0026}lt;I Sag Harborx{0026}lt;/I (2009). x{0026}lt;I Zona Unox{0026}lt;/I (2012) fue un bestseller para x{0026}lt;I The New York Timesx{0026}lt;/I , y en 2014 publicó x{0026}lt;I The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky x{0026}amp; Deathx{0026}lt;/I . x{0026}lt;I El ferrocarril subterráneox{0026}lt;/I es su última novela hasta la fecha y ha sido merecedora del Premio Pulitzer 2017, del National Book Award 2016, de la Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence y del Indies Choice Book Award de 2017. Colson Whitehead es profesor en las universidades de Columbia y Princeton, y ha recibido las becas Guggenheim y MacArthur.x{0026}lt;/P