Colson Whitehead took the historical metaphor of abolitionism in the US and imagined The Underground Railroad, which stood for a network of secret routes and safe houses to aid slaves’ escape, as an actual railroad with trains and conductors. What a clever way to wed fiction and reality.

We meet the main character, Cora, on a sinister cotton farm in Georgia, where slaves live in atrocious conditions and are used as cattle. Cora doesn’t know any other life, both she and her mother had been born on the farm, and her grandmother arrived there as a young woman to stay until death. It is a horrifying and conciliatory fact that people get used to anything, and Cora takes what little pleasures life gives her in form of rare celebratory gatherings slaves are allowed, and her little patch of land where she grows some vegetables. Her mother has abandoned her a long time ago and is famous for being the only slave who managed to escape from the plantation.

That is why a young man named Caesar approaches her one day to offer an escape together – he sees Cora as a lucky charm. Dismissing the idea at first, Cora changes her mind when events at plantation take a major turn for the worst, and one night they escape together, using Caesar’s connections with abolitionists and travelling thought the Underground Railroad in search of a better life.

Enter Ridgeway, a notorious slave-catcher who nurses personal vendetta against her family – Cora’s mother was the only slave who managed to slip away from him. Colson portrays him as such an evil and complicated character – he has personal issues of trying to make a name for himself, he is undoubtably on the evil side of the world, however, he does not seem to be as racist as others involved – in fact, his companion is a black lad whom he purchased and gave freedom to, and who became completely devoted to Ridgeway.

So that’s the setting the book follows: unending chase. We follow Cora through different states, each with their own solution to the ‘negro problem’, as hushed as population control through sterilisation or as gruesome as a road lined by mutilated bodies of slaves. Such an established fact that is – when people use the word ‘problem’ with a mention of race, religion or nationality, we know horrible things are happening.

Whitehead masterfully creates emotional instability for the reader: things just get comfortable enough, and then you know something bad is going to happen. It keeps you ill at ease all the time, reflective of what Cora feels like wherever she goes – having always been someone’s property, she is not used to the sense of self-belonging, and sees freedom as something that can be taken away at any moment.

We follow Cora to Valentine’s farm, where escaped and freed slaves work together for their communal benefit. Everyone there is free but permanently scarred by past, and she notes that ”even if the adults were free of the shackles that held them fast, only the children could take full advantage of their dreaming.” And then she adds: “If the white men let them” which sounds like the author’s remark that is very much contemporary.

The ending leaves you with hope but no definitive answer, as is fitting for the book. I do wish it gave an answer though: something decisive, beautifully wrapped, thoughtfully concluded and explanatory of the past and the future. I guess that is too much to ask of any human author, so I thank Colson Whitehead for a wonderful read instead.