Uploaded September 2019 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
Colson Whitehead is the biggest literary sensation of this decade. He was the first author since Annie Proulx to win both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for his novel The Underground Railroad (translated as De Ondergrondse Spoorweg by Atlas Contact). Several prominent figures also declared it their favorite novel, including President Obama. Written with “deadpan virtuosity and muted audacity,” as the Los Angeles Times puts it, Whitehead tells the story of Cora, a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia, who decides to take a terrifying risk and escape the brutal conditions on their plantation via the Underground Railroad. “A luminous, furious, wildly inventive tale that not only shines a bright light on one of the darkest periods of history, but also opens up thrilling new vistas for the form of the novel itself,” according to The Guardian.
This video was recorded on December 6, 2017.
Colson Whitehead is the biggest literary sensation of this decade. He was the first author since Annie Proulx to win both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for his novel The Underground Railroad (translated as De Ondergrondse Spoorweg by Atlas Contact). Several prominent figures also declared it their favorite novel, including President Obama. Written with “deadpan virtuosity and muted audacity,” as the Los Angeles Times puts it, Whitehead tells the story of Cora, a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia, who decides to take a terrifying risk and escape the brutal conditions on their plantation via the Underground Railroad. “A luminous, furious, wildly inventive tale that not only shines a bright light on one of the darkest periods of history, but also opens up thrilling new vistas for the form of the novel itself,” according to The Guardian.
This video was recorded on December 6, 2017.
