An enduring icon of American culture, Mark Twain is still widely read, carefully studied, and reinterpreted more than a century after his death. He is best known for humor and for his novels about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, but his writings extend far beyond the humorous and his immortal boy heroes. He wrote in a dizzying variety of genres, and much of his work resists categorization by exploring themes well outside the realms of normal human experience. Indeed, it would not be a stretch to say that some of his stories deal with characters and themes on the “far side” of human experience. His books such as The Prince and thePauper and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, for example, place protagonists in improbably dimensions of time and space, while tales from lesser-known works address the spooky, grisly, and inexplicable. It is a world in which buffalos climb trees, elephants eat Bibles, dogs bark Morse code messages, and human beings commit terrible crimes, make incredible mistakes, and play fantastic tricks on one another. This is an entertaining collection of both mysteries and marvels by an icon of American culture and literature.
