Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson (Version 2)

A baby switched in a cradle. A Black child raised as white. A murder trial that hinges on fingerprints. Mark Twain's 1894 novel unfolds in the antebellum Missouri town of Dawson's Landing, where two infants, one the son of a slave, one of a plantation owner, are exchanged at birth and live their lives in identities that were never theirs. The result is a courtroom thriller, a meditation on race, and a savage indictment of the beliefs that held a nation hostage. At its center stands David Wilson, the Connecticut lawyer nicknamed "Pudd'nhead" for his failed attempt at frontier wit, whose scientific obsession with fingerprinting becomes the instrument of truth in a case where the stakes are nothing less than life, death, and the meaning of identity itself. Twain's genius lies in his refusal to look away: the comedy is bitter, the tragedy is unsentimental, and the questions it asks about who we are and who society decides we are remain urgent over a century later.