Books by Colson Whitehead

A devastating novel - based on true events - of a hellish American reform school, from the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Underground Railroad.

Sekstenårige Cora er slave på en bomuldsplantage i Georgia. Hun lever i daglig angst for fornedrelse, men også med myten om sin mor, Mabel, der flygtede og klarede den. Cora og hendes ven, markslaven Cæcar, begiver sig ud på den dødsensfarlige flugt, men den fanatiske slavejæger, Ridgeway, som Mabel slap fra dengang, sætter nu alt ind på at fange hendes datter og smadre det netværk af mennesker, som hjælper de bortløbne. På sin rejse nordpå skal Cora ikke kun overliste Ridgeway og hans blodhunde, men også undgå alle de andre slavejægere, stikkere og lynchgrupper, der huserer på ruten. Den underjordiske jernbane er en hårrejsende spændende roman om en ung kvindes næsten dyriske vilje til at overleve, og samtidig er det en banebrydende litterær præstation i sin beskrivelse af den mest brutale periode i amerikansk historie. ...en vinderbog... Vinder af Pulitzer-prisen 2016 Vinder af The National Book Award 2016 Nomineret til The Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence Nomineret til The Kirkus Book Prize 2016 Kåret som årets bog 2016 i Publisher’s Weekly En New York Times-bestseller En Washington Post-, Barnes & Nobles-, Wall Street Journal- og USA Today-bestseller Præsident Obama’s Summer Read 2016 Oprah’s Bookclub Pick, august 2106 Anmeldercitater: ”Mesterligt og dybt chokerende.” THE NEW YORK TIMES “En ny amerikansk klassiker er født.” NEWSDAY “En triumf for Colson Whitehead.” WASHINGTON POST “Historien om slaveriet skrevet, som Hendrix spillede nationalsangen.” THE NATIONAL BOOK REVIEW “En rasende, lysende og nyskabende roman.” THE GUARDIAN ”Intet mindre end en genopfindelse af den historiske roman.” THE NEW YORKER “Smuk, fantasifuld og skærende præcis.” THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ”Et mesterværk.” MIAMI HERALD

Forfatteren bag Den Underjordiske Jernbane er tilbage! Elwood Curtis er fast besluttet på at blive til noget. Han er optaget af sin skole og tro mod Dr. Martin Luther Kings kamp for sorte amerikaneres rettigheder gennem fredelig modstand. Men i de amerikanske tresseres raceadskilte Sydstater skal der næsten ingenting til for at en ung sort mand kommer på den forkerte side af loven, og med ét ændrer alt sig: pludselig skal Elwood ikke længere på college, og i stedet føres han til Nickel Academy, en opdragelsesanstalt som påstår at gøre ”hæderlige, ærlige mænd” af drenge på afveje. I virkeligheden er Nickel Academy et mareridt, hvor enhver der sætter sig det mindste imod stedets depraverede autoriteter risikerer ”en tur ud bagved”. Elwood forsøger desperat at holde fast i Dr. Kings næstekærlige idealer, mens hans nye ven og medindsatte, Turner, mener at Elwood er naiv og verden korrumperet, og eneste måde at overleve på er at spejle undertrykkernes ondskab og kynisme. Og da Elwoods idealer og Turners kynisme endelig kolliderer, får det livslange konsekvenser for dem begge. Drengene fra Nickel er en knusende koncis og modig roman af en af vor tids allerstørste amerikanske forfattere, hvis klarsynede og inderligt menneskelige fortællinger kaster lys på vores egen fragmenterede samtid. ”Genial.” New York Times Book Review ”Enestående, og hjerteknusende.” Newsday ”USA’s største historiefortæller.” Times Magazine ”Med denne bog har Whitehead gjort sig til en af Amerikas fremmeste forfattere.” Wall Street Journal ”Stærk og velkomponeret.” The Guardian ”Drengene fra Nickel er fiktion, men romanen gløder med sandhedens uhyrlige ild.” The New Republic

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION 2017WINNER OF THE ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARD 2017LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER 2016AMAZON.COM #1 BOOK OF THE YEAR 2016#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 'Whitehead is on a roll: the reviews have been sublime' Guardian'Luminous, furious, wildly inventive' Observer'Hands down one of the best, if not the best, book I've read this year' Stylist 'Dazzling' New York Review of BooksPraised by Barack Obama and an Oprah Book Club Pick, The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead won the National Book Award 2016 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2017.Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. All the slaves lead a hellish existence, but Cora has it worse than most; she is an outcast even among her fellow Africans and she is approaching womanhood, where it is clear even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a slave recently arrived from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they take the perilous decision to escape to the North.In Whitehead's razor-sharp imagining of the antebellum South, the Underground Railroad has assumed a physical form: a dilapidated box car pulled along subterranean tracks by a steam locomotive, picking up fugitives wherever it can. Cora and Caesar's first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But its placid surface masks an infernal scheme designed for its unknowing black inhabitants. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher sent to find Cora, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.At each stop on her journey, Cora encounters a different world. As Whitehead brilliantly recreates the unique terrors for black people in the pre-Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America, from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is at once the story of one woman's ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shatteringly powerful meditation on history.

Den dobbelte Pulitzerprisvinder er tilbage med en sprudlende og vildt underholdende fortælling om røveri, pengeafpresning og småsvindlere i begyndelsen af 1960'ernes Harlem.Carney var lovlydig i den forstand, at han ikke var så kriminel igen …For kunderne og naboerne på 125th street er Carney en respektabel møbelhandler, der gør sit bedste for at forsørge sig selv og sin familie. Han venter sit andet barn med konen Elizabeth, og selvom hendes stræbsomme forældre hverken bryder sig om Carney eller hans trange lejlighed med udsigt til højbanen, så føles det alligevel som hjem.Kun få kender til hans forbindelser til den mere skumle del af uptown Manhattan, og hans facade af normalitet har mere end bare et par ridser.Pengene er små, så hvis Freddy, Carneys fætter, en gang imellem afleverer en halskæde eller to, spørger Carney ikke, hvor den kommer fra. Han kender en diskret juveler downtown, som heller ikke stiller spørgsmål.Men en dag falder Freddy i kløerne på en flok småforbrydere, der vil plyndre Hotel Theresa, Harlems svar på Waldorf Astoria. Dét går ikke helt eft er planen – det gør det sjældent, og pludselig er Carneys hverdag befolket af gangstere, lyssky politibetjente og andre suspekte typer, deriblandt mafi abossen Chink Montague.Harlem Shuffle er en familiehistorie maskeret som spændingsroman, en røverhistorie, en roman om racisme og magt og – ikke mindst – et kærlighedsbrev til New Yorks mest berømte bydel, Harlem.

From the author of the Man Booker longlisted The Underground RailroadA pandemic has devastated the planet, sorting humanity into two types: the uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead.

FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD (Now a major Amazon Prime TV show)ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVOURITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR 'Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked...'To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably-priced furniture, making a life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver's Row don't approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it's still home.Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his fa ade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger and bigger all the time.See, cash is tight, especially with all those instalment plan sofas, so if his cousin Freddie occasionally drops off the odd ring or necklace at the furniture store, Ray doesn't see the need to ask where it comes from. He knows a discreet jeweller downtown who also doesn't ask questions. Then Freddie falls in with a crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa - the 'Waldorf of Harlem' - and volunteers Ray's services as the fence. The heist doesn't go as planned; they rarely do, after all. Now Ray has to cater to a new clientele, one made up of shady cops on the take, vicious minions of the local crime lord, and numerous other Harlem lowlifes.Thus begins the internal tussle between Ray the striver and Ray the crook. As Ray navigates this double life, he starts to see the truth about who actually pulls the strings in Harlem. Can Ray avoid getting killed, save his cousin, and grab his share of the big score, all while maintaining his reputation as the go-to source for all your quality home furniture needs?Harlem Shuffle is driven by an ingeniously intricate plot that plays out in a beautifully recreated Harlem of the early 1960s. It's a family saga masquerading as a crime novel, a hilarious morality play, a social novel about race and power, and ultimately a love letter to Harlem.

#1New York TimesBestseller *; Winner of the Pulitzer Prize *; Winner of the National Book Award *; Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction *; Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize One of the Best books of the Year:The New York Times, The Washington Post,NPR, The Boston Globe, The Seattle Times, HuffPost, Esquire, Minneapolis Star Tribune Look for Whitehead's acclaimed new novel, The Nickel Boys, available now!Cora is a young slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. An outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is on the cusp of womanhoodwhere greater pain awaits. And so when Caesar, a slave who has recently arrived from Virginia, urges her to join him on the Underground Railroad, she seizes the opportunity and escapes with him. In Colson Whitehead's ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor: engineers and conductors operate a secret network of actual tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora embarks on a harrowing flight from one state to the next, encountering, like Gulliver, strange yet familiar iterations of her own world at each stop. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the terrors of the antebellum era, he weaves in the saga of our nation, from the brutal abduction of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day.The Underground Railroadis both the gripping tale of one woman's will to escape the horrors of bondageand a powerful meditation on the history we all share.

By the author of the international bestseller, The Underground Railroad.

By the author of the international bestseller, The Underground Railroad.

ENJOY THE ECSTASY OF AGONY. Amy and Jordan are just like us: hoping for the best, even when things go from bad to worse. They are menaced by bears, beheaded by ghosts,  and hunted by the cops, but still they struggle on, bickering and reconciling, scraping together the rent and trying to find a decent movie. It’s the perfect solace for anxious modern minds, courtesy of one of the great innovators of American comics. Now if only Amy’s skin would grow back ... This NYRC edition features a recreation of the original, pocket-size, slipcovered paperback, designed by Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly.

Verticality, architectural and social, is at the heart of Colson Whitehead's first novel that takes place in an unnamed high-rise city that combines twenty-first-century engineering feats with nineteenth-century pork-barrel politics. Elevators are the technological expression of the vertical ideal, and Lila Mae Watson, the city's first black female elevator inspector, is its embattled token of upward mobility.When Number Eleven of the newly completed Fanny Briggs Memorial Building goes into deadly free-fall just hours after Lila Mae has signed off on it, using the controversial 'Intuitionist' method of ascertaining elevator safety, both Intuitionists and Empiricists recognize the set-up, but may be willing to let Lila Mae take the fall in an election year.As Lila Mae strives to exonerate herself in this urgent adventure full of government spies, underworld hit men, and seductive double agents, behind the action, always, is the Idea. Lila Mae's quest is mysteriously entwined with existence of heretofore lost writings by James Fulton, father of Intuitionism, a giant of vertical thought. If she is able to find and reveal his plan for the perfect, next-generation elevator, the city as it now exists may instantly become obsolescent.

From the author of 'The Underground Railroad', Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and Longlisted for the 2017 Man Booker Prize.'John Henry Days' is a novel of extraordinary scope and mythic power. It established Colson Whitehead as a pre-eminent American writer of our time.Building the railways that made America, John Henry died with a hammer in his hand moments after competing against a steam drill in a battle of endurance. The story of his death made him a legend.Over a century later, J. Sutter, a freelance journalist and accomplished expense account abuser, is sent to West Virginia to cover the launch of a new postage stamp at the first 'John Henry Days' festival.John Henry Days is a work of extraordinary scope, revealing how a nation creates its present through the stories it tells of its past.