Mark Twain 1 hr 8 min read

A royal banquet, pious murderers, and the Yankee's dawning horror at the piety of tyrants.

This part of Twain's 1889 classic sets Hank Morgan among nobles who pray devoutly before cutting a throat, letting the author skewer the marriage of religion and brutality in his imagined Camelot. The comedy runs colder here. Read it for Twain at his most mordant on faith, power, and hypocrisy.

In its time

Published in 1889, during the 1880s, lost races and dying earths.

Reading it

1 hr 8 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).