A foreigner who travels to the ruined circular temple in the jungle with the magical objective of dreaming a man into existence.

The simulacrum created by the taciturn man organ by organ in his dreams, brought to life by the god Fire.

A manifold god formerly worshipped at the circular temple, who grants reality to the dreamed youth.

A twentieth-century writer who assumes the mysterious obligation to reconstruct Cervantes' Quixote word for word.

A provincial journalist in Buenos Aires who becomes a delegate to the Congress of the World and travels to London to research a universal language.

A journalist and poet who introduces Ferri to the Congress of the World and renounces his honorarium.

A dignified, red-bearded gentleman and rancher who chairs the meetings of the Congress of the World.

The Norwegian secretary of the Congress of the World who handles the overwhelming correspondence.

A delegate of lucid intelligence who raises philosophical questions about representation and Platonic archetypes.

An arrogant Uruguayan dandy who dislikes Ferri and backs down from a knife fight in a vestibule.

A burly, knife-wielding man who challenges Ferri, Eguren, and Irala outside a whorehouse on Calle Junín to test their courage.

A tall, red-haired university student in London who becomes Ferri's lover but refuses to marry him.

A Southern criminal who commands hundreds of men in a scheme to repeatedly incite slaves to run away, promising freedom but ultimately murdering them.

An Irish rebel who, after being uncovered as a traitor to the rebellion, collaborates in his own choreographed, heroic assassination.

The oldest of Kilpatrick's comrades who discovers his treason and choreographs his execution using plagiarized scenes from Shakespeare.

A descendant who investigates Kilpatrick's death, discovers it was a staged performance based on Shakespeare, and chooses to keep the secret.

A battered, monumental Jewish hoodlum from Brooklyn who commanded a criminal empire and had a deep passion for birds and cats.

An Evangelical Church minister who arrived in Buenos Aires in 1871.

A foreign-born historian from the University of the South who was driven from the Third Reich and competes with the narrator for a mission.

A traveling salesman from Liverpool who writes a play under an alias, morbidly clipping pictures of a woman he has never met and transforming his rooming house into a country house in his imagination.

An aging, failed author who publishes the complex work 'Statements', arguing cynically that readers are an extinct species and everyone is a potential writer.

A former professor of English and spy for the German Empire who murders Stephen Albert solely to transmit the name of a city to his Leader.

An implacable Irishman working under English orders who ruthlessly tracks down, arrests, and kills German spies to prove his loyalty.

An eminent Sinologist who receives Yu Tsun in his yellow-and-black garden and is suddenly murdered by him.

A barbarian warrior from the dense German forests who, overwhelmed by the incomprehensible beauty and order of Ravenna, deserts his tribe to fight for and die defending the city.

The last priest of the Pyramid of Qaholom, who is tortured and imprisoned in a dark hemispherical cell, where he spends his life trying to decipher a divine message hidden in the spots of a jaguar.

An immortal who composed the Odyssey, lived for a century in the City of the Immortals, and wandered through countless eras and empires before finally tasting from a spring that returned him to mortality.

An Icelandic traveler of grave and measured speech who journeys to the land of the Urns and recounts his experiences with King Gunnlaug to Adam of Bremen.

A Memphis freethinker, fatalist, and millionaire who proposes expanding a secret society's project from inventing a country to inventing an entire illusory planet, backing it with his vast fortune.

A young man, not yet twenty in 1918, who sits on a bench in Geneva, dreams of his older self, and passionately defends Whitman and his own literary ideals.

A scrawny youth from the New York slums who moves West, becoming a notorious horseman, rustler, and frontier outlaw feared for his lethal temper.

The sheriff and former friend of Billy the Kid who eventually kills him, noting he practiced his aim by shooting buffalo.

The owner of a large country house who greets the narrator, mistaking him for an older gentleman bearing the exact same name who has already checked into Room 19.