Audiobook · read by volunteers
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain (1835–1910)
Read by Annie Coleman Rothenberg · 43 chapters · 10 h 42
About the book
Huck Finn is a boy with no mother, a violent father and a deep distrust of anything that calls itself respectable. When he decides to escape, he sets out down the great Mississippi on a raft, and he is joined by Jim, a man who has run away from slavery. Together they drift past towns, swindlers, feuding families and storms, meeting a long string of people who are funny, foolish or frightening.
Mark Twain’s novel is narrated by Huck himself, in a voice so natural that it seems to talk straight into your ear. It is full of comedy and adventure, but it is also an unflinching look at the society that Huck is leaving, and at the conscience he finds he cannot ignore. In forty-three short chapters and under eleven hours, it is one of the great American stories, as lively and troubling to listen to today as when it first appeared.
Introduction
Mark Twain, the pen name of Samuel Clemens (1835–1910), grew up in the Mississippi town of Hannibal, Missouri, and later worked as a riverboat pilot, a journalist and a lecturer before becoming one of the best-known writers in the world. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn appeared in 1884. Huck had first been introduced as the sidekick of Tom Sawyer, and Twain’s decision to give him a book of his own, narrated in his own voice, was a bold one.
The novel is widely regarded as one of the great American novels, and critics and readers have admired it for generations. Part of its achievement lies in its use of vernacular speech. Twain wrote in several dialects and took care to render them, which was unusual for the time and had a lasting influence on American writing. The book is also famous for its treatment of race and slavery, and for the way Huck’s friendship with Jim leads him to question what he has been taught. Over the years the book has been praised, debated and challenged, and any listener should be aware that it contains the language and attitudes of its period, including words that are offensive today.
The recording has 43 sections and lasts about ten and a half hours. It is read by LibriVox volunteers, who share the chapters and provide a variety of voices. Dialogue-heavy books like this one benefit from a cast.
Why listen now? Because Huck’s story is still a gripping adventure and because it raises questions about conscience and society that have not gone away. It is funny, it is moving, and it asks the listener to think.
Public domain
Mark Twain died in 1910: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text