![[ View Details ]](https://www.bookden.com/wp-content/plugins/bdplugin/images/0385542364.jpg) When author Colson Whitehead first heard about the Underground Railroad as a child he imagined a subway beneath the earth that escaped slaves could ride to freedom. He tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that when he found out that it was not a literal train, he felt “a bit upset.”Now, in his new novel, The Underground Railroad, Whitehead returns to his childhood vision of an actual locomotive that carries escaped slaves through tunnels. The book follows a 15-year-old slave named Cora who has escaped from a Georgia plantation and must make her way north to freedom. Along the way, the train stops in different states, each of which represent a different response to slavery. “Sort of like Gulliver’s Travels, the book is rebooting every time the person goes through a different state,” Whitehead says. – npr.org |
Colson Whitehead wins 2016 National Book Award
November 17, 2016