Homo Faber

by Max Frisch

Book Overview

Walter Faber is an emotionally detached engineer forced by a string of coincidences to embark on a journey through his past. The basis for director Volker Schlsndorff's movie Voyager. Translated by Michael Bullock. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0156421356
• ISBN13: 9780156421355
• Release Date: May 1994
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 228 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.3" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Ought to be rated PG-42...

--because to truly appreciate this beautiful novel you really need to have lived through at least four decades or so. It strikes me that so much great literature goes unread by those to whom it is ultimately directed. The `classics' are generally written by writers in their 40s and 50s and end up primarily being read by teenagers. Sure, you can get something out of these texts then, but theres no way a 20-year-old can really understand *Homo Faber*--a novel about a middle-aged man confronting his own mortality, decay, & disillusionment. Death is still largely an abstraction to a man of twenty, it hasnt yet entered his bones, love is still possible, youth is still a contemporary, a 20-year-old doesnt yet know what he's going to lose, what he's never going to get back, how badly he's going to miss it. *Homo Faber* is a classic text of midlife crisis. It's a shame that so many of us have stopped reading altogether when we reach the age it can do us the most good...that we stop reading the classics, anyway, or feel they are irrelevant to our lives, or merely `stuff we already read back when we were in school.' A novel like *Homo Faber* is, to my mind, a religious text in the best sense of that term--in this case, a kind of updated Ecclesiastes. I can only wonder what the original German text is like because this translation is absolutely stunning, rising to the level of sheer poetry. Almost every line is an ice-dagger into the heart. Such a beautiful, sad, and true book...and everything that needed saying said in 212 pages. Did Max Frisch ever win a Nobel Prize for Literature when the Nobel Prize still meant something? Cause on the basis of this book alone, he should have won two!!

Logic with Passion ...

"Homo Faber", the book I have known, since my best friend recommended it to me. The frist time I read it. I was so dazled by it, when I was finished with it I had to get a English version for my friend. I still remember her reading the book, walking the hall, her head deep in reading ... It is a book which for me, is brought throught the philosphy of Camus to the description from Mr. Faber that finds his ultimate passion and love to his daughter ... Sabeth is one of the most yearned and real character I have read. It is not only a book of our time, it is also a book of the modern man that is still so true today and always will be. Recommended to be read over and over again in its written german and second translated language ...

A tragedy of a technicist

This book is one of the most important novels (although Frisch calls it "report") in German language, and I like it immensely ALTHOUGH it is being treated in German lessons, and I was shocked when I read the review in which the reviewer writes that the translator left out the criticism of the "American Way of Life" (one of the most important parts in the development, I think: Walter Faber, the main person, is sitting in Cuba, enjoying tropical thunderstorms and swears about America because it "destroyed the white race". This was also the attitude of an archaeologist he had met six months before and he didn't understand it at all).I won't tell you all the story because it's like in a criminal novel: you shouldn't know the end because if you knew it, you would read it with less attention. The main thing is that Walter Faber, an engineer who is absolutely hostile towards feelings, women etc., is overwhelmed by some happenings he would never have considered to be possible. He changes his views radically and becomes a real tragic person.Frisch's use of foreshadowings makes the reader feel the tragedy even more closely, but in his language, there are some weak points (the detailed technical pieces of information which Faber, the 1st-person-narrator, uses), which have been transformed into a wonderful parody (called "Frener") by Robert Neumann.

An amazing book that you will pick up again and again ...

Homo Faber is not just about the tragic love affair between a father and his daughter. What fascinated me most was how Walter Faber, atheist, scientist, perfectionist is forced to acknowledge the flaws in his philosophy of life. I first read this book when I was fifteen and have read it many times since. A teacher once told me to read Homo Faber every ten years and one's interpretation of the book will change with every read. An amazing novel, one of the best in postwar German literature.

The birth of one man's passion for life

This is my all-time favorite book! I read it as an undergraduate German major - in German, of course! The story has so many messages - how what we don't face will come back to us; how much of life we miss when we're to afraid to live it; how things become more intense and beautiful when love is in our hearts. The characters are developed in such a loving manner that I found myself liking and sympathizing with all, despite their faults. I think that this book makes a great summer read. Contrary to the prior review, I would not recommend the movie based on this book. I was very excited when I heard that Sam Shepard was tackling this project, but I was ultimately disappointed. There is no replacing the real thing!