Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
A boy and an escaped slave float down the Mississippi on a raft, and the novel's central drama is internal: Huck has been taught that helping Jim is a sin, and he decides to do it anyway. Twain wrote the book over eight years and the seams show, especially at the end.
The river chapters are among the best things in American literature, and the satire of feuds, religion and gentlemanly violence is still sharp. The final section, in which Tom Sawyer reappears, is widely criticised and widely defended. Read it and make up your own mind; the argument is part of the book.
Public-domain status
First published in 1884. In the United States, works published before 1930 are in the public domain. In the European Union the general term is the life of the author plus 70 years; Mark Twain died in 1910, so this work has been free to republish there since 1981.
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