Reading Order
The Underground Railroad Reading Order
Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad (2016) is a complete standalone novel. There is no sequel. The novel follows Cora, a enslaved woman on a Georgia plantation who escapes on a literal underground railroad — in Whitehead's alternate history, an actual railway system beneath the country — and makes her way through different versions of American history in each state. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award in 2017.
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The Underground Railroad
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The Underground Railroad
Colson Whitehead·2016·Standalone — Cora escapes slavery on a literal underground railroad and encounters different versions of American racial history in each state she passes through; Pulitzer Prize winner
The Underground Railroad — Frequently Asked Questions
Is The Underground Railroad a standalone?
Yes — The Underground Railroad is a complete standalone novel. Colson Whitehead has written other novels (Zone One, The Intuitionist, The Nickel Boys), but each is entirely independent.
How does Whitehead use the underground railroad literally?
Whitehead makes the underground railroad — which was historically a network of people and safe houses helping enslaved people escape — into an actual subterranean railroad with trains, conductors, and tracks. Each state Cora passes through represents a different historical approach to race in America: some states are more dangerous than the antebellum South in different ways; some are more superficially hospitable and more deeply insidious.
Is The Underground Railroad science fiction?
The Underground Railroad is most commonly described as speculative fiction or historical fiction — it uses speculative elements (the literal railroad, alternate history) but does not engage with science fiction genre conventions. It won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in the literary fiction categories.
How is The Underground Railroad different from Kindred?
Both Kindred and The Underground Railroad place contemporary sensibilities inside the experience of American slavery using speculative elements (time travel; alternate history). Kindred uses a contemporary Black woman as the POV to create identification for a modern reader; The Underground Railroad uses an enslaved woman who is entirely inside the period. Both are essential; neither replaces the other.
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