One of the greatest works of modern fiction, Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Color Purple is presented in a beautifully crafted new Folio edition, illustrated by British artist Lela Harris.
The Underground Railroad
Illustrated by Jamaal Barber
Introduced by Emma Dabiri
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for Fiction, Colson Whitehead’s hyperreal story of slave escape networks, The Underground Railroad, is presented in a standout Folio Society edition with a new introduction by Emma Dabiri and illustrations by Jamaal Barber.
£55.00
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‘Heart-stopping.’
- Oprah Winfrey
Born into slavery and abandoned by her escapee mother while still a girl, Cora knows exactly how little her life is valued in the Antebellum South. Left to fend for herself against her barbaric white captors, she must also stand up to her fellow slaves who would steal both her pathetic patch of ground and her virginity. An opportunity to escape sees her flee one set of horrors for another, choosing the slim chance of survival and freedom over a guaranteed life of hell.
Voted one of the 100 best books of the 21st century by the Guardian, and the recipient of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for Fiction, this essential novel, by one of the most important writers of our time, is now published as a striking collector’s edition. Colson Whitehead weaves reality and fantasy together in a story that best-selling author Emma Dabiri describes as ‘otherworldly, underworldly’, in her exclusive new introduction. Meanwhile, Jamaal Barber’s stunning wood-cut and painted collage artwork breathes even more life into a harrowing history that will always need retelling; a story that grabs your emotions and doesn’t let go.
Bound in Imperial cloth, printed and blocked in silver foil on front and spine
Set in Freight Text with Shelton Slab as display
296 pages
6 full-page colour illustrations, including one double-page spread
Printed slipcase
Printed in Italy
9½” x 6¼”
‘Be prepared to have your heart broken but recognize the necessity of that pain and this knowledge.’
- Emma Dabiri, from her introduction
Cora’s existence differs little from that of the generations of enslaved African American forebears, but hers is the story that Whitehead chooses to tell in this harrowing reckoning of America. Addressing the horrors of slavery head-on, this is a rare story of survival set against the normalised brutalisation of enslaved people. Transforming the fabled network of safe houses and routes used by escaped slaves into a tangible subterranean railway, Whitehead injects his electric prose with a subtle surrealism that plays on the urgency of Cora’s situation. The best-selling author of Don’t Touch My Hair, Emma Dabiri, goes behind the story to deconstruct Whitehead’s mission for readers in her introduction, while artist and printmaker Jamaal Barber uses his experience of exploring Black identity to create evocative and vibrant imagery that enhances what has become a classic work of modern fiction.
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