El ferrocarril subterráneo
(Book)

Spanish translation of English title: "The Underground Railroad : a Novel."

"Una renovada visión de la esclavitud donde se mezclan leyenda y realidad y que oculta una historia universal: la de la lucha por escapar al propio destino. Cora es una joven esclava de una plantación de algodón en Georgia. Abandonada por su madre, vive sometida a la crueldad de sus amos. Cuando César, un joven de Virginia, le habla del ferrocarril subterráneo, ambos deciden iniciar una arriesgada huida hacia el Norte para conseguir la libertad. El ferrocarril subterráneo convierte en realidad una fábula de la época e imagina una verdadera red de estaciones clandestinas unidas por raíles subterráneos que cruzan el país. En su huida, Cora recorrerá los diferentes estados, y en cada parada se encontrará un mundo completamente diferente, mientras acumula decepciones en el transcurso de una bajada a los infiernos de la condición humana... Aun así, también habrá destellos de humanidad que le harán mantener la esperanza. Whitehead nos brinda una historia universal, onírica y a la vez brutalmente realista, sobre la libertad y las ilusiones truncadas, que nos habla de la fuerza sobrehumana que emerge ante la determinación de cambiar el propio destino."--Amazon.com.

"Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood-- where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned-- Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted. 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. Cora and Caesar's first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city's placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom. Like the protagonist of Gulliver's Travels, Cora encounters different worlds at each stage of her journey-- hers is an odyssey through time as well as space. 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. [This book] is at once a kinetic adventure tale of one woman's ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shattering, powerful meditation on the history we all share."--Amazon.com.

Text in Spanish = Texto en español.