Homo Faber (novel) - Characters

Characters

  • Walter Faber is the protagonist of Homo Faber. He is an engineer and technologist who works for UNESCO. Born and educated in Switzerland, he now lives in an apartment in New York City, but travels extensively for work throughout Europe and South America. Walter has never been married.
  • Sabeth, or Elisabeth, is the 20-year-old daughter of Walter and Hanna. Born in Switzerland, she believes that Joachim is her father. She speaks English, German, and French.
  • Hanna Piper (née Landsberg) is the German-born half-Jewish mother of Sabeth. Formerly Walter's lover, she married Joachim, and then later married Herrn Piper. She works at an art institute in Athens, Greece.
  • Joachim Henke was Walter's German born friend, who was studying to be a doctor. He married Hanna, but they separated after she refused to have any more children with him. Sabeth believes that he is her father. After separating from Hanna, Joachim joined the German army and fought in World War II; Hanna and Sabeth never saw him again. Decades later, he moved to Guatemala to run a tobacco plantation. A few weeks after arriving, he committed suicide.
  • Herbert Henke is Joachim's brother, who meets Walter on a plane. He is employed by the same company that sent Joachim to Guatemala.
  • Ivy is Walter's married American mistress, who comes to New York once a week to see Walter and her psychiatrist.

Read more about this topic:  Homo Faber (novel)

Famous quotes containing the word characters:

    White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the surface of the earth, Lakes of Light.... They are too pure to have a market value; they contain no muck. How much more beautiful than our lives, how much more transparent than our characters are they! We never learned meanness of them.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    To marry a man out of pity is folly; and, if you think you are going to influence the kind of fellow who has “never had a chance, poor devil,” you are profoundly mistaken. One can only influence the strong characters in life, not the weak; and it is the height of vanity to suppose that you can make an honest man of anyone.
    Margot Asquith (1864–1945)

    Do you set down your name in the scroll of youth, that are written down old with all the characters of age?
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)