Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hellish for all the slaves, but Cora is an outcast even among her fellow Africans, and she is coming into womanhood; even greater pain awaits. Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, and they plot their escape. Matters do not go as planned - Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her - but they manage to find a station and head north.
In Whitehead''s ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is not a metaphor - a secret network of tracks and tunnels has been built beneath the Southern soil. Cora and Caesar''s first stop is South Carolina, where both find work in a city that at first seems like a haven. But the city''s placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens - and Ridgeway, the relentless slave-catcher sent to find her, arrives in town. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing journey, state-by-state, seeking true freedom.
Like Gulliver, Cora encounters different worlds at each stage of her journey - Whitehead brilliantly recreates the unique terrors for black people in states in the pre-Civil War era. 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.
Ficha técnica
Editorial: Futura
ISBN: 9780708898376
Idioma: Inglés
Encuadernación: Tapa blanda
Fecha de lanzamiento: 01/09/2016
Año de edición: 2016
Especificaciones del producto
Escrito por Colson Whitehead
Colson Whitehead, escriptor i professor universitari, va néixer el 1969 i ha crescut a Manhattan. Autor de diverses obres de ficció i assaig, va revolucionar l’escena literària estatunidenca amb El ferrocarril subterrani (Periscopi, 2017), una obra amb la qual va obtenir els prestigiosos National Book Award 2016 i el Premi Pulitzer d’obres de ficció 2017. Això el va catapultar directament a l’exclusiva llista dels autors que han guanyat aquests dos premis per un mateix llibre i entre els quals hi ha noms com William Faulkner, John Updike i Annie Proulx. L’any 2020 va obtenir el seu segon Premi Pulitzer d’obres de ficció per "Els nois de la Nickel" (Periscopi, 2020), un èxit que abans d’ell només han aconseguit Booth Tarkington, William Faulkner i John Updike. "Manifest delictiu" és la segona obra de l’anomenada Trilogia de Harlem, iniciada l’any 2023 amb El ritme de Harlem.