The Sleeper Awakes
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Sleeper Awakes is a dystopian novel by H. G. Wells about a man who sleeps for two hundred and three years, waking up in a completely transformed London, where, because of compound interest on his bank accounts, he has become the richest man in the world. A fanatic socialist and author of prophetic writings, the main character awakes to see his dreams realized, and the future revealed to him in all its horrors and malformities.
Owing its premise to Washington Irving's story, Rip Van Winkle, Wells's book in turn provided inspiration to Woody Allen's film, Sleeper.
The novel, originally published as When The Sleeper Wakes (1899), was re-written in 1910, its original form having proved unsatisfying for Wells. "Like most of my earlier work", says Wells, "it was written under considerable pressure; there are marks of haste not only in the writing of the latter part, but in the very construction of the story".
