David Wilson has earned the unfortunate nickname "Pudd'nhead" from his fellow townspeople, who fail to understand his combination of wisdom and eccentricity. However, he is eventually able to redeem himself by simultaneously solving a murder mystery and a case of transposed identities.
Two children, a white boy and a mulatto, are born on the same day. Roxy, mother of the mulatto and a slave, is given charge of the children; in fear that her son will be sold, she switches the babies.
The mulatto, though he grows up as a white boy, turns out to be a scoundrel. He sells his mother and murders and robs his uncle. He accuses Luigi, one of a pair of twins, of the murder. Pudd'nhead, a lawyer, undertakes Luigi's defense. On the basis of fingerprint evidence, he exposes the real murderer, and the white boy takes his rightful place.
This classic book, full of grim humor and Twain's trademark style,implicitly condemns a society that allows slavery. It concludes with a series of witty aphorisms from Pudd'nhead's calendar.
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Mark Twain (1835–1910) was born Samuel L. Clemens in the town of Florida, Missouri. He is one of the most popular and influential authors our nation has ever produced, and his keen wit and incisive satire earned him praise from both critics and peers. He has been called not only the greatest humorist of his age but also the father of American literature.
Téa Obreht was born in Belgrade in the former Yugoslavia in 1985 and has lived in the United States since the age of twelve. Her writing has been published in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Harper’s, and the Guardian, and has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. She has been named by the New Yorker as one of the twenty best American fiction writers under forty. She lives in New York.