This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross.

Our guest, Colson Whitehead, is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for his novels The Underground

Railroad and The Nickel Boys. The Underground Railroad is about a 15-year-old enslaved

girl who escapes a brutal Georgia plantation. It was adapted into a Peabody Award-winning

TV series. The Nickel Boys is based on the story of the Dozier School for Boys in Northern

Florida, a reform school infamous for its mistreatment and brutal punishment of boys who

were sent there and for buried bodies discovered on its grounds. There are many sides to Colson

Whitehead's writing. He also wrote a novel about a plague where everyone who's infected

becomes a zombie and a memoir about playing poker. His latest book is a crime novel called

Harlem Shuffle, said in Harlem between 1959 and 1964. It's now out in paperback. The main

character Ray Carney owns a furniture store on 125th Street in Harlem, but he has a

sideline trafficking in stolen goods as a fence or as he prefers to think of it a middleman.

Nothing like his father who was more of a full-time crook with crooked friends. The novel

is about raised dual life, class divisions within Harlem, and the crimes of the elite

compared to crimes on raised level. Terry spoke with Colson Whitehead last year.

Colson Whitehead, welcome back to Fresh Air. I love this novel. Thanks for writing it and

thanks for coming back to our show. Yeah, thanks for having me back. It's very exciting.

I want to start by asking you to do a reading and just to set this up a little bit. So,

Ray Carney is a fence. He basically deals with pretty small time stuff, but his cousin

who is more of a full-time crook, and this is a cousin who Ray has bailed out all of

the cousin's life. The cousin Freddie comes to him and says, look, we're doing a heist

of a safe at the hotel Theresa. And you describe this as the wall door of Harlem, and it was

...