Number 44 The Mysterious Stranger

Mark Twain most controversial novel introduces us to the young Satan.

The body of work is a serious social commentary by Twain addressing his ideas of the Moral Sense and the "damned human race" and relates the adventures of Satan, the sinless nephew of the biblical Satan.

"No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger" is narrated by August Feldner, a sixteen-year-old printer's apprentice living in a remote Austrian village in the late fifteenth century. The print shop in which he works is located in a run-down old castle, which houses over a dozen people, including the print master, his family, and the various men who work in the shop, as well as a magician. August relates the magical events that occur in the castle after the arrival of a strange boy who says his name is "Number 44, New Series 864,962."

Twain's central themes in this story include dreams and the imagination, as well as ideas, knowledge, and thought.