John Price is the protagonist of the novel, a 24-year-old who comes to Budapest to find his brother, with whom he has had a strained relationship. A dreamer throughout the story, he constantly suspects that "life" is better, more authentic, somewhere else. He finds a job with the upstart newspaper, BudapesToday. Both John and Scott Price are Jewish and from the west coast.
Scott Price is John's brother; his grudge against John does not abate. To escape him, he leaves for Romania with his wife, Maria. A jock alpha male with a decidedly un-alpha childhood (he was overweight and often picked-upon), he experiences regular lapses of insecurity, blaming his brother for his unpleasant childhood. For his living, he teaches English.
Emily Oliver is an embassy worker, originally from Nebraska. The details of her work are not known to the other characters (she works in a classified environment). She often feels unfulfilled by her work and suspects, herself, that she is living in the shadow of her father, with a distinguished foreign service career.
Mark Payton is a gay Canadian academicPlato is credited with the inception of academia: the body of knowledge, its development and transmission across generations. Academia is a general term for the whole of higher education and research. The word comes from the Greek referring to the greater who researches nostalgiaNostalgia currently describes a longing for the past: Often an idealized and unrealistic past The term was originally coined in 1678 by Johannes Hoffer ( 1669- 1752) from Latin roots, to refer to "the pain a sick person feels because he is not in his nati. As his time in Budapest progresses, he becomes unable to separate his life from his work (which the other characters view as charmingly irrelevant) and is eventually forced to leave for mental health reasons.
Charles Gabor is a junior member of a risk-averse venture capitalVenture capital is a general term to describe financing for startup and early stage businesses as well as businesses in "turn around" situations. Venture capital investments generally are relatively high risk investments, but may offer the potential for a firm in the United StatesThe United States of America also referred to as the United States U. America ¹ or the States is a federal republic in central North America, stretching from the Atlantic in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west. It shares land borders with Canada in. Of Hungarian ancestry (his parents escaped during the 1956 Hungarian RevolutionBudapest The 1956 Hungarian Revolution also known as the Hungarian Uprising was a popular revolt against Soviet influence and control in Hungary. The revolt was brutally suppressed by Soviet troops. About 25-50,000 Hungarian insurgents and 7,000 Soviet tr) he came to Budapest hoping to earn a fortune, but his lethargic firm refuses all of his proposals. Eventually, he grows bitter, suspecting that all of Hungary's entrepreneurialAn entrepreneur is a business innovator who establishes a new business entity to offer a new or existing product or service into a new or existing market for profitable motivations. Entrepreneurs often have strong beliefs about a market opportunity and ar spirits have been drained by four decades of CommunismThis article is about communism as a form of society, as an ideology advocating that form of society, and as a popular movement. For issues regarding the organization of the communist movement, see the Communist party article. For issues regarding one-par.
Karen Whitley is John Price's officemate, described by Nicky M. as "the office airhead", and the woman to whom John Price loses his virginity.
Nicky M, whose last name is never given, is John Price's artist girlfriend who, while affectionate toward him, is also inerrantly selfish. While allowing sexual relations to flow freely, she refuses, comically, to give him any emotional support.
Maria is Scott Price's fiance and, later, wife, of Hungarian ancestry. Despite her evident affection for Scott, she sleeps with John at one point in the novel.
Nadja is an elderly Hungarian piano player. A cosmopolite with dazzling stories, she becomes a close friend of John throughout the novel, and he even experiences a bizarre sexual attraction to her, wishing she were younger so that he could be featured in her romantic stories. Of the characters who meet her, only John actually believes her unlikely stories, but the question of their veracity is never settled.
Imre Horvath is the heir to a once-profitable Hungarian publishing house, with two centuries of tradition. Having escaped Hungary in 1956, he set up a new publishing house in ViennaThis article is about the city and federal state in Austria. For other places or things called Vienna, see Vienna (disambiguation). Vienna ( German: Wien [viːn]) is the capital of Austria, and also one of Austria's nine federal states Bundesland Wi during the Soviet occupation, and the old publishing-house, state-owned, falls into ruin. In 1990, he approaches Charles Gabor hoping to accrue venture capital and re-start the operation. By the other characters, he is viewed as a silly, self-important old man.
Krisztina Toldy is Mr. Horvath's devoted assistant.
