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.
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Oprah Winfrey has announced The Underground Railroad as the latest pick for her Oprah’s Book Club reading list. According to Whitehead, he had been informed about Oprah’s pick in April.
Whitehead, 46, is the author of highly regarded novels such as “The Intuitionist” and “John Henry Days”, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle award. “When they find out it’s not, they feel a little disappointed”, Whitehead said in his interview with Winfrey.
Winfrey’s words of praise have changed many writers’ lives. “I’ve just been in a good mood”, he said.
In the book club, weekly questions about the novel will be answered via Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
“The Underground Railroad” is easily one of the most anxiously awaited titles of the fall, the most heavily competitive season for the publishing industry. The book focuses on a teen slave named Cora and her escape from a Georgia plantation circa 1850. “And so it became sort of a “Gulliver’s Travels” type structure”.
Whitehead, a NY native, has received critical acclaim for his novels ever since his 1999 debut, “The Intuitionist”. 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.
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The book club officially kicks off on August 9, when the September issue of O: The Oprah Magazine goes on sale, which features Winfrey’s interview with Whitehead. Readers will be able to keep up with the book club on Winfrey’s website as well as on social media with the hashtag #OprahsBookClub.
