Book Club Guide

The Underground Railroad

by Colson Whitehead · 2016 · Literary Fiction

Key themes

Freedom as a constantly receding horizon
America's foundational violence and its persistence
The body as the site of history

About this book

A reimagining of the escape from slavery as a literal railway; inventive, brutal and morally clear.

Published in 2016, the novel won both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award — only the fourth book to do so. Whitehead spent more than a decade thinking about the project before writing it in a focused burst.

Discussion questions

Whitehead reimagines the Underground Railroad as a literal subterranean train. What does this magical realist choice allow him to do that a strictly realistic novel about the same events could not?
Cora's journey takes her through several states that each represent a different face of American racism — from explicit violence to paternalistic 'protection'. What is Whitehead saying about the variety of forms oppression takes?
The novel won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. What do you think it achieves that earns both — as literature and as a political statement?
Ridgeway the slave catcher believes in an 'American imperative' — the right to pursue and claim. How does Whitehead use this character to anatomise a specific kind of ideological justification for violence?
The novel refuses to provide a conventional redemptive ending. How did you read the final pages — as hope, as something more qualified, or as a refusal to offer comfort that the history doesn't warrant?