Colson Whitehead reads and discusses 'The Underground Railroad‪'‬ The Seattle Public Library - Author Readings and Library Events

Bestselling author Colson Whitehead’s newest novel,“The Underground Railroad,” tells the story of Cora, a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. In Whitehead’s ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor—engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Like the protagonist of “Gulliver’s Travels,” Cora encounters different worlds at each stage of her journey—hers is an odyssey through time as well as space. “The Underground Railroad” is at once a kinetic adventure tale of one woman’s ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shattering, powerful meditation on the history we all share. -- A Publishers Weekly starred review says, “… spellbinding and ferocious…. The story is literature at its finest and history at its most barbaric. Would that this novel were required reading for every American citizen.” -- Colson Whitehead is the New York Times bestselling author of “The Noble Hustle,” “Zone One,” “Sag Harbor,” “The Intuitionist,” “John Henry Days,” “Apex Hides the Hurt,” and one collection of essays, “The Colossus of New York.” A Pulitzer Prize finalist and a recipient of MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, he lives in New York City.