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    The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories
    The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories
    The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories
    Audiobook7 hours

    The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories

    Written by Mark Twain

    Narrated by Jonathan Kent

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    The Mysterious Stranger, Mark Twain's fantastical last novelette, took him twelve years-and three long drafts-to complete. Based on boyhood memories of the Mississippi River Valley and of the print shops of Hannibal, the story is set in medieval Austria at the dawn of the printing craft. It is a psychic adventure, full of phantasmagoric effects, in which a penniless printer's apprentice-a youthful, mysterious stranger with the curious name 44-gradually reveals his otherworldly powers and the hidden possibilities of the mind. Ending on a startling note, this surprisingly existential tale reveals a darker side to the author's genius.

    The Mysterious Stranger is a rarity in the work of Twain-a story in which the author turns his sardonic, free-wheeling wit to the problem of Eternal Evil in a distant time and place. In the other stories presented here, Twain debunks his Gilded Age; he ransacks the backyards of daily life and fable to find his notorious, sometimes preposterous metaphors. He is as apt to deal with the great minds of the law hunting a wayward elephant as with a man who has a bank note no one can cash.

    In addition to The Mysterious Stranger, this volume includes the stories "The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg," "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," "The Story of the Bad Little Boy," "The Diary of Adam and Eve," "Edward Mills and George Benton," "The Joke That Made Ed's Fortune," and "A Fable."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateFeb 16, 2009
    ISBN9781400179220
    Author

    Mark Twain

    Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835, left school at age 12. His career encompassed such varied occupations as printer, Mississippi riverboat pilot, journalist, travel writer, and publisher, which furnished him with a wide knowledge of humanity and the perfect grasp of local customs and speech manifested in his writing. It wasn't until The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), that he was recognized by the literary establishment as one of the greatest writers America would ever produce. Toward the end of his life, plagued by personal tragedy and financial failure, Twain grew more and more cynical and pessimistic. Though his fame continued to widen--Yale and Oxford awarded him honorary degrees--he spent his last years in gloom and desperation, but he lives on in American letters as "the Lincoln of our literature."

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    Reviews for The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories

    3.5/5

    35 ratings4 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A nice collection of four short stories by Mark Twain. The first two, The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and The 1,000,000 Pound Bank-Note, are more on the humorous side, while the last two, The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and The Mysterious Stranger, focus more on human nature and its faults. Of the four, The Mysterious Stranger stands out as my favorite. I found it interesting that even though Satan causes many to die, he makes some really good points about how we treat each other. The discussion with Theodor after the lady is hanged (pg. 110-111) was particularly relevant.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed all of the stories except the title story. The first time I've run across something by Mark Twain that I just didn't like at all.
    • 4/5
      The four stories in this collection span Twain's career. The first two are light-hearted, but 'The Man that conquered Hadleyburg' and 'The Mysterious Stranger' are both bitter in their playing out of the plot. The latter was particularly dark (which is appropriate, since it was set in the Dark Ages!). I found myself, as a Christian, thinking that this story was an embodiment of what Satan really does - he tells half truths and deludes one into thinking that it is the whole truth.
    • 4/5
      Linda (Whisper1) sent me this book because I had never heard of Twain’s novella, The Mysterious Stranger. Of the four stories in the book I had previously read only the first story, The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, a short and humorous folk tale published in 1865. According to the blurb on the back, the stories in this volume were chosen to span Twain’s entire writing career. The second story, The 1,000,000 Pound Bank-Note, is a light-hearted tale about a destitute young man who is given a bank note he can’t cash so how will he be able to survive? I loved The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, a masterful story about greed and hypocrisy. The final story, The Mysterious Stranger, was published posthumously in 1916 and reveals how disillusioned Twain had ultimately become with humanity and the universe. It’s a strange but fascinating dark fantasy set in the Middle Ages with a character who is omniscient and a surprising twist at the end. Although I cannot buy Twain’s ending this story gives the reader a lot to ponder. Highly recommended