A fourteen-year old tramp who smokes a pipe; hates school; and sleeps in a barrel; and a runaway slave who is sought by the authorities; going down the Mississippi River on a leaky raft: these are the main ingredients of one of the most popular novels in world literature. The one is running away from a violent; drunken father; and a bourgeois society that tries to 'civilize' him; the other is running away from slavery.On the mighty Mississippi they are finally free - or so they believe...