About the Book

The Waves is a 1931 novel by Virginia Woolf and is considered to be her most experimental work.

The book consists of soliloquies spoken by six characters: Bernard, Susan, Rhoda, Neville, Jinny, and Louis. Also important is Percival, the seventh character, though readers never hear him speak in his own voice.

Much of The Waves can be seen as a meditation on the structure and limits of the self. One of the most obvious aspects of this novel is the way that humans are both disconnected and isolated from one another and at the same time define one another.