Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood—where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned—Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted. 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. Cora and Caesar’s first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city’s placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom. 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. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates 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. 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.


可拉是喬治亞州棉花田的奴隸，生活對所有奴隸來說都像座煉獄，但可拉的生活更是悲慘，因為連非洲同胞都鄙棄她，即將成年的可拉未來將面對更痛苦的折磨。來自維吉尼亞州的凱薩剛到棉花田，他告訴可拉地下鐵路的事，他們決定一起冒險，一起逃跑。但計劃趕不上變化，可拉殺了想抓她的年輕白人男孩。雖然他們設法找了個車站，朝北方前進，但卻遭到追捕。憑著作者懷特海德的精巧構思，地下鐵路不再是個隱喻，而是成了一個由工程師和車掌經營、位於美國南方地底的秘密鐵軌和隧道網。可拉和凱薩的第一站是南卡羅來納州，這是一個本來看起來像天堂的城市。但是這個城市祥和的表面下卻隱藏著一場針對黑人居民的陰謀，更糟的是無情的奴隸獵人里奇維近在咫尺。可拉被迫再次逃跑，踏上了折磨人的飛行之旅，越過一州又一州，為的是尋找真正的自由。可拉就像是《格列佛遊記》裡的主角，在旅程中的每個階段經歷了不同的世界，這是一段穿越時空的探索旅程。作者懷特海德精彩營造美國內戰前獨特的黑人恐怖時期，敘述慘忍的黑奴進口到現今未履行的承諾，流暢地編織出屬於美國的長篇故事。本書道出一個歷險故事，展現了一個女人從奴役恐懼中逃離的驚人意志，同時也是人類對歷史令人震撼、富有力量的沈思。