Historical fiction · Similar reads
Books like The Underground Railroad
The best books like The Underground Railroad are Twelve Years a Slave, Between the World and Me, and The Warmth of Other Suns. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead is about slavery and its legacy, freedom and its cost, american myth and american reality. If that's what drew you in, here are 12 books that share its DNA — each summarized on Superbook, and ready to chat with in the app.
- Twelve Years a Slave
01
Solomon Northup · Memoir
Twelve Years a Slave, published in 1853, is the memoir of Solomon Northup, a free Black man from New York who was kidnapped in 1841, sold into slavery in Louisiana, and held for twelve years before recovering his freedom.
A kindred historical fiction read.
Read the summary → - Between the World and Me
02
Ta-Nehisi Coates · Memoir
Between the World and Me is a letter from Ta-Nehisi Coates to his teenage son, Samori, about what it means to live in a Black body in the United States.
A kindred historical fiction read.
Read the summary → - The Warmth of Other Suns
03
Isabel Wilkerson · Memoir
Isabel Wilkerson's account of the Great Migration — the movement of six million Black Americans from the South to the North and West between 1915 and 1970 — is one of the most important works of narrative nonfiction published in the twenty-first century.
A kindred historical fiction read.
Read the summary → - Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
04
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
Ibram X. Kendi · History
Stamped from the Beginning is Ibram X.
A kindred historical fiction read.
Read the summary → - Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
05
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
Isabel Wilkerson · Memoir
Isabel Wilkerson's second book proposes a reframing of American racial hierarchy: rather than thinking of racism primarily as prejudice, she argues that the United States has operated as a caste society, with Black Americans at the bottom of a rigidly maintained hierarchy similar in its structure — though different in its specific mechanisms — to the caste systems of India and Nazi Germany.
A kindred historical fiction read.
Read the summary → - Washington Black
06
Esi Edugyan · Historical fiction
Washington Black opens on a Barbados sugar plantation in the 1830s, where George Washington Black — Wash — is an eleven-year-old enslaved boy.
Both dig into race and power.
Read the summary → - Along Came a Spider
07
James Patterson · Thriller
Along Came a Spider introduces Alex Cross, a Black homicide detective and forensic psychologist working in Washington D.C., in the case that made James Patterson a bestseller.
Both dig into race and power.
Read the summary → - James
08
Percival Everett · Literary fiction
James retells Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Jim — renamed James here — the enslaved man who escapes down the Mississippi with Huck Finn.
Both dig into race and power.
Read the summary → - L.A. Confidential
- A Gentleman in Moscow
10
Amor Towles · Historical fiction
In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is sentenced by a Bolshevik tribunal — not to death, but to permanent house arrest in Moscow's Metropol Hotel.
A kindred historical fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Tale of Two Cities
11
Charles Dickens · Historical fiction
A Tale of Two Cities is set against the French Revolution and follows three intertwined characters: Charles Darnay, a French aristocrat who has renounced his title and family legacy; Lucie Manette, the daughter of a man who spent eighteen years imprisoned in the Bastille; and Sydney Carton, a dissolute English lawyer who loves Lucie without hope and knows he will never be the man Darnay already is.
A kindred historical fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Thousand Splendid Suns
12
Khaled Hosseini · Historical fiction
A Thousand Splendid Suns follows two Afghan women across nearly forty years of their country's turbulence: Mariam, the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy merchant who is married off at fifteen to a much older man in Kabul, and Laila, a young woman from a different generation whose family is destroyed in a rocket strike during the civil war and who is subsequently forced into the same household.
A kindred historical fiction read.
Read the summary →
Books like The Underground Railroad: quick answers
What are the best books like The Underground Railroad?
The best books like The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead are Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup, Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson, plus 7 more below. Each was chosen for themes it shares with The Underground Railroad, such as slavery and its legacy, freedom and its cost, american myth and american reality.
What should I read after The Underground Railroad?
A natural next read after The Underground Railroad is Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup. A kindred historical fiction read. Other strong choices are Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi.
What books are similar to The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead?
The Underground Railroad centers on slavery and its legacy, freedom and its cost, american myth and american reality. Books with a similar feel include Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup, Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson, Washington Black by Esi Edugyan — all free to read and chat with on Superbook.
