The Underground Railroad cover art

The Underground Railroad

10th Anniversary Edition

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

The Underground Railroad

By: Colson Whitehead
Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

 WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION 2017

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER 2016

AMAZON.COM #1 BOOK OF THE YEAR 2016

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARD

'Whitehead is on a roll: the reviews have been sublime' Guardian

'Luminous, furious, wildly inventive' Observer

'Hands down one of the best, if not the best, book I've read this year' Stylist

'Dazzling' New York Review of Books


Praised by Barack Obama and an Oprah Book Club Pick, The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead won the National Book Award 2016.

Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. All the slaves lead a hellish existence, but Cora has it worse than most; she is an outcast even among her fellow Africans and she is approaching womanhood, where it is clear even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a slave recently arrived from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they take the perilous decision to escape to the North.

In Whitehead's razor-sharp imagining of the antebellum South, the Underground Railroad has assumed a physical form: a dilapidated box car pulled along subterranean tracks by a steam locomotive, picking up fugitives wherever it can. Cora and Caesar's first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But its placid surface masks an infernal scheme designed for its unknowing black inhabitants. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher sent to find Cora, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.

At each stop on her journey, Cora encounters a different world. As Whitehead brilliantly recreates 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. The Underground Railroad is at once the story of one woman's ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shatteringly powerful meditation on history.©2016 Colson Whitehead African American Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Railroad Heartfelt Inspiring Scary Thought-Provoking Tear-jerking Africa American History

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Dance of the Jakaranda cover art
Citizens Creek cover art
The Awakening cover art
Paradise Alley cover art
Beloved cover art
Make Me a City cover art
A Thousand Splendid Suns cover art
The Last Days of Dogtown cover art
Kindred cover art
The Known World cover art
The Girl Who Wrote in Silk cover art
The Orphan Master's Son cover art
Invisible Man cover art
Parable of the Sower cover art
March cover art
Belonging cover art

Critic reviews

It has invaded both my sleeping and waking thoughts . . . Each character feels alive with a singular humanity . . . Whitehead is on a roll, the reviews have been sublime (Bim Adewunmi)
An engrossing and harrowing novel
[A] brutal, vital, devastating novel...This is a luminous, furious, wildly inventive tale that not only shines a bright light on one of the darkest periods of history, but also opens up thrilling new vistas for the form of the novel itself (Alex Preston)
This thrilling tale of escape from a deep south plantation takes in terror, beauty and the history of human tragedy..This uncanny novel never attempts to deliver a message - instead it tells one of the most compelling stories I have ever read. Cora's strong, graceful hands touch on the greatest tragedies of our history
It's so good it's hard to praise it without whipping out the cliches: it's an elegant, devastating powerhouse of a book, following a young black woman all over America as she tries to escape the horrors of slavery. When it was published with Oprah's imprimatur, in August, it was universally acclaimed. It deserved it (Michelle Dean)
One of the best, if not the best, book I've read this year . . . Whitehead never exploits his subject matter, and in fact it's the sparseness of the novel that makes it such a punch in the gut (Sarah Shaffi)
My book of the year by some distance...It's a profound and important novel, but more than anything it's an absurdly good read, gripping you in its tightly wound plot, astonishing you with its leaps of imagination. If Whitehead doesn't win every prize going next year, I'll appear on Saturday Review in my underpants (Alex Preston)
Whitehead is a superb storyteller . . . [he] brilliantly intertwines his allegory with history . . . writing at the peak of his game . . . Whitehead's achievement is truly remarkable: by giving the Underground Railroad a new mythology, he has found a way of confronting other myths, older and persistent, about the United States. His book cannot have enough readers
It is an extraordinary novel, a rich, confident work that will deservedly win - on the basis of literary merit as well as moral purpose . . . History and human experience as well as an artist's obligation to tell the truth have shaped a virtuoso novel that should be read by every American as well as readers across the world. And it will be, it should be (Eileen Battersby)
An utterly transporting piece of storytelling (Alex Heminsley)
Bestselling author Colson Whitehead's novel is a searing indictment of slavery with a detailed inventory of man's inhumanity to man - and Cora's flight is a harrowing and shocking trip for the reader
All stars
Most relevant
great performance and a great story, but its not a light listen! the main character Cora is likeable and you really get drawn in to her story and want her to succeed. there are twists and turns in the story but the gritty realism keeps you grounded.

Gritty and Bleak

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A very harsh story of an awful chapter in history but told beautifully, well worth a listen

brilliant listen,

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This had been on my to read list for sometime and it didn't disappoint. The twist in the story about 1/4 into the book initially left me bewildered but it really does work, when not taken literally (no spoilers). Chilling in parts but a testiment to the human spirit

Highly recommended

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Emersed in black history! This book made me feel like I was Cora, enduring her journey every horrible step of the way. how terrible life was for black slaves. The punishing regemes of life under the laws of the white slave master who had every right to treat his 'property' worse than animals. For me this book ended too soon. I wanted my happy ever after but i understand that life is often not that simple. The narrator was fabulous and now i am going to research if the underground was based on any documented truth? even if not, it possibly was! a 10/10 alround read.

so rich in history...

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I've known about slavery in the American South all my life, but never engaged emotionally until listening to this book on Audible.

Deeply affecting

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews