The Underground Railroad

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The Underground Railroad: Episode 5

Episode 5

BBC Radio 4 - The Underground Railroad, Episode 5

Cora flees, but where will the railroad take her on this occasion?

Cora flees, but where will the railroad take her on this occasion? Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, read by Clarke Peters.

"What if the underground railroad was a literal railroad? And what if each state, as a runaway slave was going north, was a different state of American possibility, an alternative America?"

Colson Whitehead's inventive novel follows Cora and Caesar as they escape from a Georgia cotton plantation and run north in pursuit of freedom, aided by the stationmasters and conductors of the Underground Railroad. This brilliant and at times brutal novel about the history of slavery and racism in America, won the US National Book Award for Fiction in 2016 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2017.

Read by Clarke Peters (The Wire, Treme, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri)
Abridged in ten parts by Sara Davies. Produced by Mair Bosworth for BBC Audio in Bristol.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in February 2017.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about slavery in America.

Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, which re-imagines the Underground Railroad as a literal network of tunnels and subterranean tracks. Read by Clarke Peters.

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