Tono-Bungay

Narrated by young George Ponderevo, this sweeping social comedy follows his uncle Edward’s rise from country chemist to millionaire quack on the strength of a worthless patent medicine called Tono-Bungay, laying bare the fraud, glamour, and hollowness of modern commerce. Wells turns from science fiction to a panoramic realist novel about money, advertising, class, and the restless energy of Edwardian England. Funny, ambitious, and sharply critical, it is often considered his finest ‘straight’ novel. Through the meteoric bubble of the Ponderevo empire, Tono-Bungay dissects a whole society built on salesmanship and illusion, delivering one of the great English novels about the making and unmaking of fortunes.