"A number of Mark Twain's lesser-known stories remain virtually unheard of - not because they aren't good – but because they'd offend too many people.

His short novel The Mysterious Stranger, published posthumously in 1916, certainly qualifies in this regard. It's not going to be on any of the official reading lists of the various public schools named after him. And it's an absolutely hilarious and caustic little story that you need to get familiar with.

The force of the satire that this irreverent, scathing genius brings down upon the entire Christian conception of God and Moral Sense is really something to behold.

In this small work you can feel a lifetime of the great man's anger, frustration, and contempt for so much baloney... This story belongs in the same class as Voltaire's Candide and Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan."
-S.A. Alenthony