The War of the Worlds

Multiple times adapted for the screen (including by Steven Spielberg), and in 1938 reworked by Orson Welles into a radio drama, the broadcast of which went down in history. Read years later, it turns out to be a prophetic work, a kind of foreshadowing of the 20th-century world wars.

How do people - both individuals and entire communities - behave in the face of an invasion that threatens mass destruction? Who are we to the invaders, and who are they to us? What role do new technologies play in this? And what can save us? Herbert George Wells attempts to answer these questions in a way that remains attractive to contemporary readers, and perhaps the widespread sense of unease, uncertainty, and threat makes "The War of the Worlds" a compelling and relevant novel even in the 21st century.

'The War of the Worlds,' H.G. Wells's most brilliant work, is also one of the few novels that, going beyond the fantastical nature of its assumptions, has entered the treasury of world literature.