Beginning as a comedy depicting the lives of ordinary people in provincial England, Wells’s story gradually transforms into the tragedy of a brilliant scientist whose incredible discovery separates him from humanity forever, erecting an impassable wall of invisibility between him and other people and turning him into a madman who poses a threat to society...

Wells’s protagonist imagines himself to be a “superman,” and this character later became one of the most famous embodiments of the evil genius in world literature.

The scientist Griffin decides to rule the world. He proclaims the beginning of a new era, believing that invisibility gives him countless advantages over everyone else. He can enter virtually any place unnoticed and carry out his own plans, however cruel they may be. And no one will ever know where that “punishing hand” has come from...