Science fiction · Thriller
The Invisible Man
A bandaged stranger arrives at a village inn, and underneath the bandages there is nothing at all.
Five levels, about 80 languages
- A2ElementaryShort sentences and everyday words.
- B1IntermediateYou follow clear stories about familiar things.
- B2Upper intermediateLonger sentences, richer vocabulary.
- C1AdvancedClose to the original, lightly condensed.
- C2ProficientThe complete novel.
One purchase is one book, in one language, at one level: $4.99. Another level of a book you own is $1.99. Editions nobody has asked for yet are written on request: chapter 1 in a few minutes, the rest while you read. How the levels work.
About the book
A stranger at the Coach and Horses
On a snowy day in February a stranger walks into the Coach and Horses inn at Iping, a village in Sussex. He is wrapped from head to foot: gloves, hat, dark glasses, a bandaged face. He wants a room, a fire and to be left alone. Mrs Hall, the landlady, is delighted to have a guest in winter, and very curious about him. He sets up a laboratory full of bottles and is rude to everyone. The village begins to talk. H. G. Wells published the novel in 1897, and its first half is as much a village comedy as a science fiction story.
Why it works for learners
The opening chapters are full of village life: the innkeeper and his wife, a clock mender, the doctor, the vicar, gossip in the bar. The dialogue is quick and funny, and the vocabulary is domestic and concrete: inn, room, fire, coat, door, window, bottle, money, police. Once the stranger’s secret is out, the book turns into a chase, and the tension never lets up. The novel is short and easy to follow, but its portrait of a brilliant man who cares for no one is a serious one.
Which level to start at
B1 is ideal. A2 works well for the comic first half. Wells’s irony about the villagers comes through best from B2. If you like the title, G. K. Chesterton wrote a completely different “Invisible Man”, a clever detective story in The Innocence of Father Brown.
Read next
- The Time Machine, Wells’s first scientific romance
- Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, another experiment that goes wrong
- The Innocence of Father Brown, for Chesterton’s very different invisible man
