Twenty years after the end of the Civil War, Twain started work on an antislavery novel. But he was incapable of writing a mere tract and gave us instead the unforgettable Huckleberry Finn. It is by turns rollicking, dark, satirical, and just plain outrageous. Huck is sick and tired of the "civilizing" influence of the Widow Douglas, not to mention regular beatings from his father, a drunk. So he and Jim, a runaway slave, set off on their great adventure: floating to freedom on a Mississippi raft. The Mississippi of Twain's day was another frontier: a place to lose your identity, to start over, to make your fortune. Thus the story remains as fresh and compelling for us today as it did when it was first published more than 100 years ago.
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