The Underground Railroad 10th Anniversary Edition

<p><b>WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION 2017</b><br><br><b>WINNER OF THE ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARD 2017</b><br><br><b>LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017</b><br><br><b>NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER 2016</b><br><br><b>AMAZON.COM #1 BOOK OF THE YEAR 2016</b><br><br><b>#1 <i>NEW YORK TIMES</i> BESTSELLER AND A <i>NEW YORK TIMES</i> BOOK OF THE YEAR </b><br><br><b>'Whitehead is on a roll: the reviews have been sublime' <i>Guardian</i></b><br><br><b>'Luminous, furious, wildly inventive' <i>Observer</i></b><br><br><b>'Hands down one of the best, if not the best, book I've read this year' <i>Stylist </i></b><br><br><b>'Dazzling' <i>New York Review of Books</i></b><br><br><br>Praised by Barack Obama and an Oprah Book Club Pick, <b><i>The Underground Railroad</i></b> by Colson Whitehead won the National Book Award 2016 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2017.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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. <i>The Underground Railroad</i> is at once the story of one woman's ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shatteringly powerful meditation on history.</p>