When The Sleeper Wakes

What It's About

Graham, an ordinary Victorian man, falls into an inexplicable trance in 1897. When he finally wakes, over two hundred years have passed. In his absence, compound interest has made him the wealthiest individual on Earth, and a secretive ruling Council has used his fortune - and his sleeping body - to build and control a vast, technologically advanced but deeply unequal society. Graham emerges into a London transformed beyond recognition: a sprawling city under vast glass roofs, its population divided between a pampered elite and an exploited underclass. As he learns the truth of the world built in his name, Graham is drawn into the mounting unrest between the ruling powers and the people who have long awaited "the Sleeper's" awakening as a symbol of change.

Key Concepts

The novel is one of Wells' earliest dystopian works, exploring themes of unchecked capitalism, class stratification, and the corrupting effects of power and inherited wealth. It also imagines mass media and crowd manipulation through "Babble Machines," an early conception of broadcast propaganda, alongside striking predictions of urban sprawl, aviation, and mechanised labour. Wells uses the story to interrogate what happens when technological progress outpaces social and moral development, leaving vast inequality in its wake.

About the Author

H. G. Wells was an English writer best known for pioneering works of science fiction. Trained initially in biology, he brought a scientific sensibility to his speculative fiction, using imagined futures and fantastical premises to explore social and political concerns of his day.