The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain's 1884 novel, narrated by Huck Finn, a boy fleeing his abusive father who fakes his own death and sets off down the Mississippi River on a raft with Jim, an escaped enslaved man. Their journey becomes a series of episodic encounters with con men, feuding families, and the brutal absurdities of antebellum Southern society, forcing Huck to repeatedly confront the gap between the morality he was taught and what his conscience tells him. Widely considered the first great American novel, it is both a coming-of-age adventure and a sharp satirical indictment of racism and hypocrisy.