Hilariously picaresque epic in scope alive with the poetry and vigor of the American people Mark Twain s story about a young boy and his journey down the Mississippi was the first great novel to speak in a truly American voice. Influencing subsequent generations of writers -- from Sherwood Anderson to Twain s fellow Missourian T.S. Eliot from Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner to J.D. Salinger -- Huckleberry Finn like the river which flows through its pages is one of the great sources which nourished and still nourishes the literature of America.