The aim of this essay is to provide an overview of representations of sleep in modern fiction from the late nineteenth century to the present day. It will explore the presence of sleep and sleep-related experiences in key literary periods (fin de siècle, modernist, postmodernist) and genres (detective fiction, science fiction, magic realism, ‘LadLit’), and show how this universal human experience commands the fascinated attention of writers even as it uncannily defies straightforward literary representation.