This Pulitzer-winning neo-slave narrative reimagines the Underground Railroad as a real subterranean network, in a Sisyphean allegory that illustrates the relentless metamorphoses of white supremacy and Black resistance.
—
Julian Lucas,
New Yorker,
22 July 2026
His fingerprints are all over the 21st-century Big Inventive Novel, with its sentient raindrops (Elif Shafak), its melodramatic families (Kiran Desai), its metamorphoses of race (Mohsin Hamid) and history (Marlon James).
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to
show current usage.Read More
Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors.
Send us feedback.