A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court

'You know about transmigration of souls; do you know about transposition of epochs - and bodies?' So Hank Morgan, mechanic and factory supervisor from Hartford, Connecticut, introduces his strange history, which begins when he wakes up to find himself in sixth-century England. And so Mark Twain introduces us to the results - satiric, satanic, anguished and anarchic - of an imaginary confrontation between the new, nineteenth-century America and Olde England. Rich comedy and extravagant romance permeate the narrative, but these are undercut by a darkness and a depth of seriousness which give the work an ambivalence - the product of Twain's own divided attitude. A benign fantasy becomes an apocalyptic vision of terrifying violence and destruction. A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court is a superbly entertaining novel. It is also a profoundly disturbing one.