<P> The Underground Railroad, published in 2016, is the sixth novel by American author Colson Whitehead . </P> <P> The alternate history novel tells the story of Cora and Caesar, two slaves in the southeastern United States during the 1800s who make a bid for freedom from their Georgia plantations by following the Underground Railroad, which the novel depicts as primarily a rail transport system in addition to a series of safe houses and secret routes . </P> <P> The Underground Railroad was a critical and commercial success, hitting the best seller lists and winning several notable prizes . It won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction, the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the 2017 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence . It was longlisted for The 2017 Man Booker Prize . </P> <P> The story is told in the third person, focusing mainly on Cora . Scattered single chapters also focus on Cora's mother Mabel, the slavecatcher Ridgeway, a reluctant slave sympathizer named Ethel, and Cora's fellow slave Caesar . </P>

Synopsis of the underground railroad by colson whitehead