Adventure · Historical
The Last of the Mohicans
A frontier scout and his Mohican companions guide two sisters through a forest at war.
Five levels, about 80 languages
- A2ElementaryShort sentences and everyday words.
- B1IntermediateYou follow clear stories about familiar things.
- B2Upper intermediateLonger sentences, richer vocabulary.
- C1AdvancedClose to the original, lightly condensed.
- C2ProficientThe complete novel.
One purchase is one book, in one language, at one level: $4.99. Another level of a book you own is $1.99. Editions nobody has asked for yet are written on request: chapter 1 in a few minutes, the rest while you read. How the levels work.
About the book
A forest at war
It is 1757, and Britain and France are fighting for North America, each with Native allies. Two sisters, Cora and Alice Munro, set out with a young officer, Major Heyward, to join their father, the commander of Fort William Henry. Their guide, a Huron called Magua, leads them astray. They are saved by the frontier scout Hawkeye and his Mohican friends, Chingachgook and his son Uncas, the last of their people. James Fenimore Cooper published the novel in 1826, the second of his five Leatherstocking Tales.
Why it works for learners
The story is a long chase through forests, rivers and caves, with escapes, ambushes and captures in quick succession. That gives you the vocabulary of the wilderness: tree, river, canoe, trail, rifle, tracks, fire, waterfall. Hawkeye’s woodcraft, reading broken twigs and footprints, makes for scenes that are easy to follow because they’re about looking closely.
Cooper’s own prose is famously hard going, with long sentences and longer speeches; Mark Twain mocked it in a well-known essay. A retelling keeps the action and the characters and loses very little. Like many novels of its time, it portrays Native Americans through the ideas of its age, some romantic and some hostile.
Which level to start at
B1 is the right start for most learners. B2 keeps more of the landscape and the speeches. C1 and C2 are for readers who want Cooper as he wrote, and they’re a real workout. If no one has read it yet in your language at your level, Lexo writes that edition for you: chapter 1 is ready in a few minutes, and the rest follows while you read.
Read next
- Ivanhoe, by the novelist Cooper was most often compared to
- Kidnapped, another pair on the run through wild country
- The Call of the Wild, survival in a different North American wilderness