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What books should everyone read before they die?Add Book
The Underground Railroad
Colson Whitehead
Literature
James Mustich
Aug 3, 2018
This is a book about griefs and longings and the fleeting tenderness of people in sorrow. Through its brave combination of empathy and invention, it brings a new dimension to the tradition of the slave story, summoning from the atrocities and sufferings of the past the enduring presence that literature can create. History needs fiction to transform it into stories that can speak across generations, rather than remain locked in time. No surprise, then, that The Underground Railroad is also a book about the power of language and the powerlessness that accompanies its loss. Through his own gifts of expression, Whitehead mines such hidden words, fashioning them into a novel that gives voice to the humanity silenced by servitude.
I don’t often come to the end of a book and say, “Wow,” aloud. Whitehead draws on materials including life stories of former slaves recorded during the Federal Writers’ Project, runaway slave ads, and The Diary of a Resurrectionist. At the end, he also cites his musical inspirations, mentioning that David Bowie is in every novel, and when he writes the last pages of his books he always plays Sonic Youth and “Purple Rain.” The Underground Railroad has a very musical feel with its interludes and themes.The deeper I got into the novel, the more my admiration grew. It’s a perfectly calibrated, textured book; it never wallows.
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"1,000 Books To Read Before You Die" is a registered trademark of Workman Publishing, Inc. Based on the book: 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die by James Mustich, (Workman Publishing Co., Inc.: © 2018 James Mustich)
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