1 h 45 minAudiobook8 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 1 h 45 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if heaven is so vast that Earth barely matters—and your wings and harp disappoint you?
In Mark Twain’s satirical story, Captain Stormfield approaches the afterlife with a sailor’s curiosity and a firm sense of his own importance. His journey crosses immense stretches of space, where even the speed of travel becomes a joke. The universe gives him little reason to think Earth holds a special place.
As Stormfield learns how this imagined heaven works, his expectations keep failing him. Wings and a harp offer less satisfaction than he expects. A fellow inhabitant, Sandy, helps explain the place, and their conversations turn everyday arrangements into questions about fame, achievement, and what makes a person matter.
What you’ll discover
- A sailor beyond Earth Follow Stormfield’s curious gaze as the afterlife unsettles his very human sense of importance.
- Space with comic scale Travel through a universe whose immense distances make earthly assumptions look wonderfully small.
- Heaven without easy answers Discover why familiar wings and a harp fail to deliver the satisfaction Stormfield expects.
- Sandy’s patient explanations Join conversations that move from daily arrangements to searching questions about achievement and worth.
- Dry humor, searching questions Enjoy Twain’s comedy as Stormfield measures each surprise against lessons that no longer fit.
Who will love it
Readers who like American humor, tall tales told in a lively spoken voice, and playful, clever ideas about heaven, rank, pride and what people expect from eternity.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A dead captain races a giant comet
- A clerk who has never heard of Earth
- Harps and hymns cure themselves in a day
- Sandy McWilliams on age and a mother's grief
- Wings are only for show
- Rank, justice and who the story laughs at
Who’s who
- Captain Eli StormfieldA boastful San Francisco sailor who dies, races a comet, and then wants to find the right heaven and learn how it works.
- PetersThe friend who listens as Stormfield tells his tale, asked again and again to stay calm at the size of the numbers.
- Sandy McWilliamsA bald old angel from New Jersey with a cranberry farm who explains heaven's customs, ranks and ages to Stormfield.
- Sam BartlettAn old acquaintance who tells Stormfield why harps and halos wear off and why heaven is the busiest place of all.
- The head clerkA weary gate official who has never heard of California, America or the world, and tries to place Stormfield.
- The Jersey City bartenderA newly converted drowning victim who expects heaven to come out in a torchlight procession to welcome him.
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- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 1 h 45 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 8 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Read and hear Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven in 25 languages and switch at any time. Or read two side by side, paragraph by paragraph: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven
by Mark Twain · 1909
A sea captain races a comet, loses, and arrives at a heaven where nobody has heard of Earth.
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In short
Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven is a comic tale by Mark Twain, who died in 1910. A sea captain from San Francisco tells his friend Peters how he crossed space for thirty years and finally reached the Hereafter.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A dead captain races a giant comet
Captain Eli Stormfield begins his tale thirty years after his death. He has been rushing through space aimed at the Hereafter, faster than any comet he meets. He speaks to his friend Peters like a sailor spinning a yarn, with ship talk about starboard bows, helms and sails.
One night he spots a comet far bigger than anything in our solar system. He gives chase and runs along its flank for hundreds of millions of miles without reaching its waist. The officer of the deck sees him coming and orders every hand aloft. Brimstone is heaped on the furnaces, and the comet swells into a blazing cloud of red-hot canvas.
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What is Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven about?
It follows a sailor who dies, races a comet and arrives at the wrong gate of a vast heaven. He learns its odd customs from friends, and the story pokes fun at ordinary ideas of harps, halos, rank and fame.
Why does Stormfield race a comet?
He meets a huge comet while speeding toward the Hereafter and cannot resist a contest. He pulls ahead and jeers at the captain, who then dumps cargo and wins the race. The detour sends Stormfield to the wrong gate.
What does the Wart mean in the story?
The Wart is the name a heavenly clerk's helper gives to Earth when he finds it on a giant map. The joke shows how small Earth looks next to the countless worlds in heaven.
The author
Mark Twain
1835–1910 · American humorist and novelist
Mark Twain was the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, an American author born in Missouri in 1835. He lived in Hartford, Connecticut, from 1874 to 1891. He wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Prince and the Pauper (1881). He died in Redding, Connecticut, in 1910.
More by Mark Twain
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