The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

Read October 2017.

This was the winner of the Man Booker prize 2017 and there was naturally a huge amount of hype around this book.
I have found, over the years, that winners of the more intellectual book prizes are not necessarily as good reads as the hype may suggest, and this book did nothing to sway me from this belief.

Whitehead's idea that the "Underground Railroad" could have existed as a physical railway line is undoubtably a weird, but interesting, concept; although the logistics of creating this railway without detection are ridiculous.

However, what really put me off the book was the fact that this is an "alternative history" of events too. The historical facts about the real Underground Railroad and events surrounding it were thrown to the winds and replaced with nonsense.
This ended up belittling the role played by the actual people (both black and white), who risked their lives to help runaway slaves, not to mention all the fantastic historical inaccuracies. Don't even get me started....

All credit to Whitehead for raising issues about the disgraceful crimes that were perpertrated against slaves, but this is not a history of the Underground Railroad. Please go and read a good and accurate historical account instead.