The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Huck Finn fakes his own death to escape his violent, drunken father, and sets off down the Mississippi River on a raft. He is joined by Jim, an enslaved man fleeing to freedom, and the two form an unlikely bond as the current carries them deeper into the antebellum South.

Published in 1884, Mark Twain’s masterpiece is narrated entirely in Huck’s own irreverent, unschooled voice – a revolutionary choice that gave American literature a new way of speaking. Along the river, Huck and Jim encounter feuding families, con artists, mob violence, and the persistent cruelty of a slaveholding society. At the novel’s moral center is Huck’s agonizing decision over whether to turn Jim in or help him escape, a choice that forces a barely literate boy to reject everything his world has taught him about right and wrong.

Often called the great American novel, Huckleberry Finn is a funny, brutal, and deeply humane story about conscience, freedom, and the courage to think for oneself.