The Island of Dr. Moreau

It wa only in the last ten or so pages that I realised that this was the equal of The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds, as well as something of a parallel to Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

It's an extremely dark satire of human society, touching on ethics, techno-modernity, and the anthropology of religion. Really, like War of the Worlds, it's also obliquely about colonialism and racialism, and even interrogates proto-totalitarianism and biopolitics.

i can't believe I waited nearly twenty years to read this.