The Invisible Man: A Grotesque RomanceH. G. WellsOmniClassics · Literature
The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance
H. G. WellsA stranger's extraordinary secret turns a village disturbance into a struggle over power.
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About the book
A heavily wrapped visitor arrives at a village inn demanding privacy for work that nobody can readily explain. His impatient dealings with the people around him produce comedy, suspicion, and eventually a threat far beyond an ordinary disagreement with a guest. Wells examines invisibility as a physical condition with practical difficulties as well as apparent advantages. Food, clothes, weather, shelter, and the need for other people's cooperation complicate the fantasy of moving unseen. As the stranger's history emerges, scientific achievement becomes entangled with resentment and the desire to control others. The novel changes pace from local confusion to pursuit while retaining its interest in the social world that makes individual life possible. Its central experiment tests character as severely as it tests scientific ingenuity.
- Power and responsibility
- Isolation
- Scientific ambition
Why read it
For the inventive practical consequences of an impossible discovery and the dark comedy they produce.
English text