Mark Twain 48 min read

The Yankee and King Arthur go incognito among the common people, and discover how the other half suffers.

This part of Twain's 1889 classic disguises Hank and the king as humble travelers, exposing the monarch to the misery of his own subjects and the reader to Twain's fiercest social criticism. Read it as the novel turns from comedy toward its unsparing look at slavery, poverty, and power.

In its time

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

Reading it

48 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).