Homo Faber

A man who strives for pure rationality and control finds himself at the mercy of fate, in a "novel that speaks tellingly of loneliness, love, and despair" (Booklist).

Walter Faber, engineer, is a man for whom only the tangible, calculable, verifiable exists. He is devoted to the service of a purely technological world. His associates have nicknamed him Homo Faber-"Man the Maker."

But during a flight to South America, Faber succumbs to what he calls "fatigue phenomena," losing touch with reality-and soon he finds himself crisscrossing the globe, from New York to France to Italy to Greece. He also finds himself in the company of a woman who-for reasons he cannot explain or understand-strongly attracts him.

The basis for the film Voyager starring Sam Shepard, this novel "capture[s] that essential anguish of modern man which we find in the best of Camus" (Saturday Review).

Translated by Michael Bullock