Cora is a young 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.


可拉是美國喬治亞州棉花田的年輕奴隸。奴隸的生活已經很苦了，但可拉的生活更是悲慘，因為連非洲同胞都鄙棄她，可拉未來將面對更痛苦的折磨。凱薩是來自維吉尼亞州的奴隸，他剛到棉花田。凱薩力勸可拉加入他，一起去地下鐵路，而可拉決定抓住機會，和凱薩一起逃跑。

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。可拉踏上了折磨人的飛行之旅，越過一州又一州，與許多人相遇。可拉就像是《格列佛遊記》裡的主角，在旅程中不斷經歷不同的世界。

作者懷特海德精彩營造出美國內戰前的恐怖時期，在書中描寫慘不人道的黑奴綁架事件，以及到至今仍未履行的承諾，編織出美國冒險故事。

本書道出扣人心弦的冒險故事，描寫一個女人想從奴役恐懼中逃離的意志，也道出人們對歷史強烈的沉思。