The Underground Railroad is Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize winning novel that reimagines American slavery by blending historical fiction with elements of surrealism. The protagonist is Cora, a young women who escapes from the brutal plantation in Georgia where she, her mother before her and her grandmother before that, were all enslaved. Cora and her fellow slave, Caesar, embark on a harrowing journey towards freedom using the underground railroad; which in Whitehead's vision, is a real subterranean train line that carries slaves to freedom.

Whitehead's prose manages to capture the terror, resilience and small, fleeting flickers of hope in Cora's story. Each state that Cora travels through presents a different vision of racism, some more dystopian and more terrifying than others, keeping the narrative unpredictable. The book manages to capture the emotional weight of feeling constantly unsafe, and permanently in danger.

The intention of this ambitious novel is to amplify the collective experience rather than concentrate on individual storylines. This is a vivid and unsettling read that challenges us and our understanding of American history (currently being re-written by a certain orange-faced President and his cronies). This alone earns this book a well-deserved place in the modern literary canon, due not only to the story-telling, but also to its urgency and search for truth.