Homo Faber — Max Frisch

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