The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson
In a sleepy Mississippi town, two babies—one born to slavery, one to privilege—are secretly switched in the cradle, and the consequences ripple through the decades toward a murder solved by the eccentric lawyer Pudd’nhead Wilson using the new science of fingerprints. Twain turns a tragic, ingenious plot into a searing indictment of slavery and the fictions of race, laced with his trademark humor and the sardonic ‘Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar.’ Dark, sharp, and ahead of its time, the novel exposes the arbitrariness of the color line with devastating irony. Both a pioneering detective story and a bitter social satire, Pudd’nhead Wilson is one of Twain’s most provocative works.
About the Author
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, was born in 1835 in Florida, Missouri, and grew up in Hannibal on the banks of the Mississippi. Most of his fiction would later draw on that childhood, sometimes directly. He worked as a printer’s apprentice, then…
See all books by Mark Twain →
