Homo Faber

Homo Faber is a novel by Swiss author Max Frisch, published in 1957. The title itself, "homo faber," is Latin for "man the maker" or "skillful man". The novel explores the life of Walter Faber, an engineer who embodies this concept, seeing himself as a rational creator and controller of his environment.12

The narrative follows Faber's journey, during which his belief in logic and technology is challenged by a series of events that reveal his own complicity in tragedy, drawing parallels to the myth of Oedipus. Frisch uses Faber's story to examine themes of identity, guilt, and the moral dilemmas faced by individuals in the 20th century. The novel contrasts the idea of homo faber with homo sapiens, highlighting the human capacity for reason versus the human experience of emotion and moral responsibility.231