The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Paperback - 2023)

Rated among the most excellent works of American fiction, Mark Twain’s classic The Adventures of Tom Sawyer paints an unforgettable picture of Mississippi frontier life, combining picaresque adventure with challenging satire and great innovative power.

It is indeed great fun to look back at our own childhood as we relive Tom’s romantic exploits through his eyes and our own in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Tom, a universally recognised classic literary hero, is an intelligent and imaginative boy who is nevertheless careless and mischievous. He lives with his priggish brother Sid, cousin Mary and his good-hearted Aunt Polly in the quiet town of St Petersburg, Missouri. His companion is another irrepressible young boy Huckleberry Finn, and together they embark on many exploits, during one of which they happen to observe Injun Joe—a part-native American “half-breed”—stab the town doctor Robinson to death and attempt to incriminate Muff Potter, a hapless drunk. Tom and Huck succeed in revealing the truth, but now the real murderer is after their life. However, Tom is later able to absolve Potter at the trial. Tom and his sweetheart Becky Thatcher wander away from a school picnic and are lost for three days in a cave, where Tom spies Injun Joe. After the children are rescued, Injun Joe is found dead and his treasure is divided between Tom and Huck.

From the famous episodes of whitewashing the fence, and the ordeal in the cave, to the hunt for treasure that Joe had buried, the novel is simply superb.

Mark Twain, the pen-name for Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was born in Florida, Missouri in 1835. He made the scenes of his youth internationally famous in his most popular novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He left school at the age of twelve, and later travelled throughout the East and Midwest as a journeyman printer. In 1863 he began using the name Mark Twain, and in 1865 made it famous with his story The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. He quickly established his reputation as one of the best of the South-western humorists.