His 2016 summer holiday reading – released by the White House’s press department – not only included Helen Macdonald’s sublime H Is for Hawk, but also Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad begins on a particularly vicious Georgia plantation, where all anyone wants to do is escape. The first 70 pages of The Underground Railroad are beautifully written and painful to read, but there is a sense of having been here before. Cora, deciding to flee with Caesar, a fellow slave, finds herself swept into the great secret undertaking that is the underground railroad. The Underground Railroad is published by Fleet (£14.99).

Source: The Guardian October 09, 2016 06:00 UTC