About this audiobook
In Tudor London, a chance meeting brings together Prince Edward and Tom Canty, a poor boy who looks remarkably like him. Exchanging clothes begins as a moment of curiosity, but appearances soon persuade other people to treat each boy as the other. The experiment separates them from the lives and protections they have always known.
Mark Twain follows the contrast between palace expectations and the insecurity of life outside them. Tom must confront unfamiliar rules and responsibilities, while Edward discovers conditions that royal status has kept at a distance. Their experiences expose how readily clothing, habit and authority can outweigh a person's own explanation of who he is.
The story combines adventure and mistaken identity with questions about justice and compassion. Its imagined exchange makes social inequality immediate, asking what people might understand differently if they had to experience the consequences of institutions from a place they had never expected to occupy.
