The Sleeper Awakes

By Herbert George Wells

This is a short novel about a nineteen century Englishman who falls in a deep sleep only to awake over two hundred years later. The World has changed beyond recognition, and „The Sleeper” finds himself in a remarkable predicament – he has become the owner of the entire planet. However, his awakening profoundly shakes this state of affairs, and he suddenly finds himself at the very center of revolutionary social upheavals and a struggle for the ultimate power. But when he comes out of his trance he is horrified to discover that the money accumulated in his name is being used to maintain a hierarchal society in which most are poor, and more than a third of all people are enslaved. This struggle is the main focus of the larger part of the novel. The novel proposes that whatever is done officially for the good of society, individual ambition is unlikely to address the failure of capitalist structures to create a good standard of living for those whose work supports the system.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Libreka GmbH
• Release date: Apr 14, 2017
• ISBN: 9788381156127

Herbert George Wells

Born in 1866 in Bromley, England, to a poor family, Herbert George Wells began as an apprentice at the age of 14, but educated himself on his own, received a scholarship (1884), and specialized in biology at the University of London, from which he graduated in 1888. Having become a teacher, but still without money, he will ask journalism for additional resources. His first book is a work of biology, his second a novel: La Machine à explorer le temps (1895), which was an immediate success. One of the pioneers, with Jules Verne, of the novel of anticipation, Wells is also a polemist, believing in progress through science. These trends are reflected throughout a work that includes nearly 50 novels, tales, short stories and essays. H. G. Wells died in London on August 13, 1946.