The Invisible Man The Invisible Man The Invisible Man is a science fiction novel by H. G. Wells. Originally serialized in "Pearson's Weekly" in 1897, it was published as a novel the same year. The Invisible Man of the title is Griffin, a scientist who has devoted himself to research into optics and invents a way to change a body's refractive index to that of air so that it neither absorbs nor reflects light and thus becomes invisible. He successfully carries out this procedure on himself, but fails in his attempt to reverse it. An enthusiast of random and irresponsible violence, Griffin has
Invisible Man in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005, calling it "the quintessential American picaresque of the 20th century", rather than a "race novel, or even a bildungsroman". Malcolm Bradbury and Richard Ruland recognize an existential vision with a "Kafka-like absurdity". According to "The New York Times", former U.S. president Barack Obama modeled his memoir "Dreams from My Father" on Ellison's novel. Ellison says in his introduction to the 30th Anniversary Edition that he started to write what would eventually become Invisible Man in a barn in Waitsfield, Vermont in the summer of 1945 while on sick leave