Huckleberry Finn would rather run wild than yield to his guardian Widow Douglas's attempts to "sivilize" him.

Kidnapped by his no-good, drunkard father, Huck manages to escape by faking his own death.

While hiding out he meets runaway slave Jim, and the two absconders, bound together by circumstance, strike out for freedom down the Mississippi on a makeshift raft, where an assortment of rogues and scoundrels lie in wait.

Rough-hewn Huck narrates his own adventure-filled story, in which the treatment of outcasts serves as a touchstone for the values of mainstream American society.

It outraged some when it first appeared, and still incites controversy; but most endorse Hemingway's view: "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn...There was nothing before.

There has been nothing as good since".