Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Huckleberry Finn’s adventures have long become a classic, and many consider it Mark Twain’s most significant contribution to American and world literature. In a simple, accessible language—with kindness and humor—through his young hero, the author introduces the reader to the life of 19th-century America without shying away from problems that are by no means childlike. Hec, a homeless boy—an orphan with a living father— is forced to escape, even though since the first book his life seemed to have changed for the better. His companion becomes the runaway Black man Jim, and as the boy moves down the Mississippi, he encounters a multitude of situations from which not everyone, even adults, can easily find a way out and make the right decision. Through the adventures of his hero, Mark Twain raises many social problems of society, some of which remain relevant even today: problems of the homeless, alcoholism, racial intolerance, slavery, blood-family revenge, gullibility and fraud—on the pages of the novel, even “Romeo and Juliet” appear in passing.

Although the author’s contemporaries criticized the novel for the writer’s unambiguous stance on slavery and racism (it even went so far as to remove the book from some libraries), starting from the second half of the 20th century the author was also criticized for insufficient political correctness and racist statements—now it even leads to removing it from the curricula of some American schools and editing the original text.