Amazon has a streaming deal to Broadcast the Underground Railroad

The project is based on Colson Whitehead’s bestselling novel The Underground Railroad, which won a Pulitzer Prize a month after Amazon bought the adaptation. The book, which drew critical praise for its imaginative blend of history and magical fable – moving beyond the boundaries of realism in its depiction of a mythical underground train that transports slaves across an alternate America — also was a 2016 National Book Award winner and Oprah Book Club pick.

task I very much look forward to.”

The Underground Railroad, which will be released on Amazon Prime Video, centers on young Cora, a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood—where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape.

The underground railroad is no mere metaphor — engineers and conductors operate a network of tracks and tunnels constructed in secret beneath the very Southern soil upon which they’ve been enslaved. Cora and Caesar’s first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But its placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, a relentless slave catcher of mythic origin, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state-by-state, seeking true freedom in a heroine’s journey carved through the soil and soul of America.

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