Publication Order of Harlem Trilogy Books
| Harlem Shuffle | 2021 |
| Crook Manifesto | 2023 |
| Cool Machine | 2026 |
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| The Intuitionist | 1999 |
| John Henry Days | 2001 |
| Apex Hides the Hurt | 2006 |
| Sag Harbor | 2009 |
| Zone One | 2011 |
| The Underground Railroad | 2016 |
| The Nickel Boys | 2019 |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
| The Colossus of New York | 2003 |
| The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky and Death | 2014 |
About Colson Whitehead
Colson Whitehead (born 6 November 1969 in New York City) is an American novelist and one of only four writers to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction twice, for “The Underground Railroad” and “The Nickel Boys”. He has published ten novels and two books of non-fiction.
Whitehead grew up in Manhattan, attended Trinity School and graduated from Harvard University in 1991. He then wrote for The Village Voice, where he began drafting fiction. His debut, “The Intuitionist” (1999), follows Lila Mae Watson, an elevator inspector in a city resembling New York. “John Henry Days” (2001) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and in 2002 he received a MacArthur Fellowship.
His subjects have ranged widely. “Sag Harbor” (2009) is set in 1985 and follows a teenager, Benji, spending the summer in the Long Island village of the title, while “Zone One” (2011) takes place in a post-apocalyptic United States overrun by zombies. His non-fiction consists of “The Colossus of New York” (2003), a meditation on life in Manhattan, and “The Noble Hustle” (2014), an account of the 2011 World Series of Poker.
“The Underground Railroad” (2016) tells the story of Cora, who escapes a Georgia plantation by way of a railroad the novel imagines as a real rail network. It won the National Book Award, the 2017 Pulitzer Prize and the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and Barry Jenkins directed a miniseries adaptation released on Amazon Prime Video in May 2021. “The Nickel Boys” (2019), inspired by the Dozier School for Boys in Florida, brought his second Pulitzer in 2020 and was filmed by RaMell Ross as “Nickel Boys” (2024).
His most recent work is the Harlem Trilogy, a sequence of crime novels. “Harlem Shuffle” (2021) takes place in Harlem between 1959 and 1964, “Crook Manifesto” followed in 2023, and “Cool Machine”, published by Doubleday on 21 July 2026, concludes the story. In July 2026 Variety reported that the trilogy was in development as a series at Apple TV. Whitehead was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2023 and lives in Manhattan.
Photo: Garrettf67, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).