A Tramp Abroad

About the book

Twain's narrator sets out with his companion Harris to explore European landscapes and customs, particularly in German-speaking regions and the Alps. The declared project of travelling on foot repeatedly gives way to other arrangements, excursions, anecdotes, and difficulties that become more important than the destination. The book mixes observation with comic invention, allowing a practical inconvenience to develop into an elaborate episode or an argument about language and national habits. Mountain scenery and tourist institutions receive both attention and irreverence. The narrator's confidence rarely prevents him from becoming part of the joke. As the journey accumulates detours, Twain makes travel a form of storytelling whose failures of efficiency are productive, inviting readers to enjoy the distance between an orderly plan and the experience someone later claims to have had.

• Travel
• Comic self-presentation
• Plans and experience

Why read it

For a European journey whose diversions and unreliable ambitions make the narrator as entertaining as his destinations.

Comic travel narrative · English text