The Sleeper Awakes

<p>Unlike his later more optimistic works H. G. Wells' earlier books display a deep mistrust of science and 'progress'. <em>The Sleeper Awakes</em> is arguably the starkest and most pessimistic of these dystopian novels. It tells the tale of Graham a chronic insomniac who falls into a coma-like sleep from which he emerges over two hundred years later to discover that investments willed to him by two childless industrialists have borne such fruit that he - The Sleeper – is now the owner of half the world. A 'Council' rules despotically in The Sleeper's name presiding over a futuristic society of surpassing ugliness with the uneducated masses themselves deeply asleep – their minds clouded by incessant propaganda and with no right to either property or privacy. Appalled Graham strives for change and finds himself regarded as a Messiah by the impoverished masses. But can The Sleeper alone sustain the revolution? And is he willing to make the ultimate sacrifice?</p>