Characters
- Alfred Jones: The narrator, a widower in his 50s with a glove over his artificial left hand. He marries Anna-Luise Fischer.
- Anna-Luise Fischer: The daughter of the title’s Dr. Fischer and wife of narrator Alfred Jones. She despises her father for the way he treats people, especially how he treated her late mother.
- Dr. Fischer: A fabulously wealthy man who made his fortune via the invention of perfumed toothpaste. Fischer is a widower who throws dinner parties to humiliate his rich guests.
- Mrs. Montgomery: A wealthy widow who can never remember Jones’ name and keeps calling him “Smith.” She is the only female guest at the dinner parties.
- Deane: A former pin-up actor whose looks are fading. He is a guest at the dinner parties.
- The Divisionnaire: A retired Swiss military officer, sometimes mistakenly called “The General” by his fellow dinner party guests.
- Belmont: A tax accountant and guest at the dinner parties.
- Kips: A secretive man with a severely deformed spine that causes him to stoop so far that he faces the ground. He appears to be involved in arms smuggling.
- Steiner: The former love interest of Mrs. Fischer, now a clerk in a Geneva record store. Steiner was fired by Mr. Kips after Dr. Fischer found out about his friendship with Mrs. Fischer.
Read more about this topic: Doctor Fischer Of Geneva
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“The Nature of Familiar Letters, written, as it were, to the Moment, while the Heart is agitated by Hopes and Fears, on Events undecided, must plead an Excuse for the Bulk of a Collection of this Kind. Mere Facts and Characters might be comprised in a much smaller Compass: But, would they be equally interesting?”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)
“When the characters are really alive before their author, the latter does nothing but follow them in their action, in their words, in the situations which they suggest to him.”
—Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936)
“A criminal trial is like a Russian novel: it starts with exasperating slowness as the characters are introduced to a jury, then there are complications in the form of minor witnesses, the protagonist finally appears and contradictions arise to produce drama, and finally as both jury and spectators grow weary and confused the pace quickens, reaching its climax in passionate final argument.”
—Clifford Irving (b. 1930)