The river novel that taught America to hear its own voice.

Few books have travelled as far as the raft Huck Finn pushes off from the Missouri shore. Written in the plain, vivid speech of a boy from the river towns, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn broke with the polished prose of its day and proved that American vernacular could carry great literature.

Twain drew on his own years as a steamboat pilot, and the Mississippi in these pages is alive: generous, dangerous and always moving. Against it he sets the hypocrisy of the shore, where respectable people defend slavery and call it decency.

The book remains debated, taught and reread around the world, and its central moment, when Huck decides he would rather 'go to hell' than betray Jim, is still one of the great acts of conscience in fiction.