The Underground Railroad (Oprah's Book Club)
A Novel
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The Underground Railroad (Oprah's Book Club)
Narrateur(s):
Bahni Turpin
Acheter pour 23,31 $
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Narrateur(s):
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Bahni Turpin
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Auteur(s):
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Colson Whitehead
À propos de cet audio
One of The New York Times’s 10 Best Books of the 21st Century • A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of the Century • A Los Angeles Times Best Fiction Book of the Last 30 Years
The basis for the acclaimed original Prime Video series directed by Barry Jenkins.
Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. An outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is on the cusp of womanhood—where greater pain awaits. And so when Caesar, a slave who has recently arrived from Virginia, urges her to join him on the Underground Railroad, she seizes the opportunity and escapes with him.
In Colson Whitehead's ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor: engineers and conductors operate a secret network of actual tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora embarks on a harrowing flight from one state to the next, encountering, like Gulliver, strange yet familiar iterations of her own world at each stop.
As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the terrors of the antebellum era, he weaves in the saga of our nation, from the brutal abduction of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is both the gripping tale of one woman's will to escape the horrors of bondage—and a powerful meditation on the history we all share.©2016 Colson Whitehead (P)2016 Random House Audio
Ce que les critiques en disent
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE, THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD, THE ALA ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL AND THE HURSTON/WRIGHT AWARD
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, WALL STREET JOURNAL, WASHINGTON POST, TIME, PEOPLE, NPR AND MORE
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
“Get it, then get another copy for someone you know because you are definitely going to want to talk about it once you read that heart-stopping last page.” --Oprah Winfrey (Oprah's Book Club 2016 Selection)
“[A] potent, almost hallucinatory novel... It possesses the chilling matter-of-fact power of the slave narratives collected by the Federal Writers’ Project in the 1930s, with echoes of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, and brush strokes borrowed from Jorge Luis Borges, Franz Kafka and Jonathan Swift…He has told a story essential to our understanding of the American past and the American present.” --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
Highly recommend.
Moving.
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pretty good
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I was so ignorant to history until this book. So thankful I am a Canadian.
Disturbing and very informative
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The cruelty of the slave owners and the slave hunters was terrible. I thought most were caring and kind but this book portrays the opposite. I enjoyed listening to Cora’s flight to freedom and her relationships as she moved further away from her slave owner. Did she stay in St Louis or go on to California?
The Underground Railroad
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Rating: 6.48/10
The Underground Railroad is a novel that tries to do too much and ends up lacking the depth and emotional resonance it promises. While the premise is undeniably intriguing—reimagining the Underground Railroad as an actual underground train system—this concept quickly feels like a gimmick that detracts from the very real horrors of slavery.
Whitehead’s writing is undeniably skillful, but often overly detached and clinical. The emotional core of the story, which should be the horrific suffering of the enslaved, is too often undercut by his decision to lean into magical realism. The underground train is a symbol, yes, but it also feels like an unnecessary distraction from the grueling and real journey that Cora and others face. It weakens the intensity of the lived experiences of enslavement, reducing them to something less grounded and less immediately painful.
Cora, the protagonist, feels more like a vehicle for the novel’s larger themes than a fully realized character. We are told she is strong, resourceful, and determined, but the novel doesn’t show us her growth. There is little depth or complexity to her character—her inner struggles are never explored beyond the surface level. She exists as a mere survivor, moving through a series of scenes rather than evolving as a person. The supporting cast, like Caesar, Ridgeway, and others, lack development, and come across more like ciphers for certain ideas—symbols of resistance, oppression, and obsession—rather than fully realized individuals. This lack of depth makes it difficult to care about their fates.
The pacing also works against the novel. Long stretches drag, with Whitehead opting for reflection over action in places where the story should be driving forward. The episodic nature of the story can make it feel disjointed, and instead of building to a satisfying climax, it meanders. When moments of intense action or conflict do arise, they often lack the weight they should carry, largely because we’ve been kept at such a distance from the characters’ emotional arcs.
Moreover, while the novel’s thematic exploration of systemic racism is important, it often feels like an intellectual exercise rather than an emotional one. Whitehead seems more interested in the big ideas than in creating a raw, deeply emotional experience for the reader. The occasional flashes of brilliance—moments where the brutality of slavery and the human spirit’s will to survive shine through—are undermined by the heavy-handedness of the book’s larger messages.
While The Underground Railroad has its moments, it ultimately feels like a novel of missed opportunities. It doesn’t fully succeed in capturing the emotional gravity of its subject matter, nor does it offer the profound insight it seems to promise. The magical realism aspect takes the novel further from the lived experience of slavery, rather than adding to it, and the pacing and character development leave much to be desired.
In the end, The Underground Railroad doesn’t live up to its potential. It is thought-provoking, but it’s more an intellectual exercise than an emotionally resonant journey. This results in a 6.48 solid, but not the masterpiece it was built up to be.
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead Rating: 6.48/10
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Great book
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Well read and interesting
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