Naivčine na putovanju, ili Novo hodočašće I-II

Naives on a Journey, or The New Pilgrimage is a Croatian translation of Twain's famous travel book, one of his most successful and widely read prose works. The book was based on the author's steamship journey with an American group of travelers through Europe and to the Holy Land, and combines travelogue, humorous prose, social satire and reportage observation.

Twain describes visits to France, Italy, Greece, Constantinople and Palestine, but he is not only interested in the sights but also in the behavior of the travelers themselves, their expectations, prejudices and tendency to view the world through ready-made ideas. This is precisely what makes the book special: it is not just a travelogue, but a humorous and often very caustic demystification of the tourist view, romantic ideas about the old world and sublime pilgrimage clichés.

Twain's narrative voice is direct, ironic and extremely witty. He simultaneously observes foreign countries and his own countrymen, and the result is a book that speaks equally of Europe, the Orient, and the American mentality of the 19th century. This work occupies an important place in Twain's wider oeuvre because it solidified his reputation as a great humorist and travel writer, and at the same time showed a penchant for exposing social posturing, sentimentality, and false cultural prestige. That is why Traveling Fools remains a lively, entertaining, and historically important classic of travel satire.