Colson Whitehead
(New York, 1969) is seen as one of the most ambitious, ground-breaking contemporary American writers. His latest novel, The Underground Railway, was chosen for Oprah Winfrey's 2016 Book Club Selection. Obama put it on his summer reading list. November 2016 Whitehead received the National Book Award, the most prestigious American literary prize, for his novel. The book is Whitehead's alternative history of slavery in America. Slave Cora flees via the Underground Railway (a clandestine network of anti-slavery activists) to the free north as a macabre Alice in Wonderland. The New York Times drew wrote that the book helps not only to understand America's past but also contemporary times. Whitehead debuted in 1999 with The Intuitionist, named the best novel of the year by Esquire magazine. Besides six novels, he has also written two non-fiction books, and regularly writes for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Granta and Harper's.
Past events
Ideology as an Act of Fiction
Writers are more likely to take up the pen than the sword in order to fight injustice. Fiction becomes their ideological act.
This Is Not America (part 1)
A late-night show about the United States of America that touches on many issues, from the shrinking middle class to the differences between whites and blacks, from hopeful new immigrants to the embittered white underclass. The America of the supporters of President Trump.
