Freedom train

A runaway slave makes a daring escape from a Deep South bounty hunter

- CAREN CLARK, JUDY EWENS, IAN MACEWAN, VICTORIA WILSON

In 19th-century America, the ‘underground railroad’ was a metaphor for a network of secret routes and safe houses that was established to help slaves escape from the Deep South.

But in Colson Whitehead’s 2016 novel The Underground Railroad, the writer imagined it as a real system of trains and tunnels that slave Cora uses after escaping from a plantation in Georgia.

Now, the book, set in an alternate US history before the Civil War, has been turned into a TV series by Barry Jenkins, Oscar-winning director of 2017 film Moonlight, who recalls being enthralled by tales of the so-called railroad as a youngster.