The Underground Railroad

Original version

BBC Radio 4 FM

BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

BBC Radio 4

Radio 4

Radio 4 (FM)

BBC Radio 4 Extra

BBC Radio 4 LW

Clarke Peters

Colson Whitehead

Sara Davies

Mair Bosworth

The Underground Railroad: Episode 9

Episode 9

BBC Radio 4 - The Underground Railroad, Episode 9

Cora's refuge, Valentine farm, comes under threat.

Cora's refuge, Valentine farm, comes under threat. 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.

Audiobooks

Podcasts

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.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

The Underground Railroad

Episode 9

Contributors

Series

BBC Radio 4 FM

About BBC Radio 4