Cosmopolis characters

Appears from the start

A twenty-eight-year-old billionaire currency trader who runs his financial empire from a heavily equipped limousine. Restless in his Manhattan penthouse, Eric decides to cross the city for a haircut at the barbershop he visited as a child, even though traffic and security warnings make the journey impractical.

Appears from the start

Eric's chief bodyguard, responsible for monitoring threats and moving him safely through the city. Torval warns that the day's presidential visit, demonstrations, and a specific danger to Eric make the westward trip unwise.

Appears from the start

A systems specialist in Eric's organization who meets him inside the limousine. Shiner helps maintain the technological network that makes the car a mobile office and allows Eric to treat the city's movement as streams of information.

First appears in chapter 2

Eric's currency analyst, consulted as the firm's enormous position against the yen begins moving the wrong way. Chin looks for an explanation in ordinary market patterns while Eric insists that the currency must eventually conform to his model.

First appears in chapter 2

Eric's chief of finance, who enters the limousine for a meeting and medical examination of her own. She gives him a direct assessment of the firm's exposure while the yen's rise threatens the fortune on which his confidence rests.

First appears in chapter 2

Eric's newly married wife, an heiress and poet whose family fortune is distinct from his own. Their encounters across the city are formal and oddly remote; Eric repeatedly seeks intimacy, while Elise doubts his fidelity and remains difficult for him to possess or interpret.

First appears in chapter 3

An art dealer and one of Eric's former lovers. He visits her apartment during his journey and tries to buy an entire monumental chapel of paintings, treating a culturally shared object as something his wealth should be able to remove into private ownership.

First appears in chapter 4

Eric's chief theorist, who interprets markets, technology, and social change while riding with him through an anti-capitalist demonstration. She describes the protest as something the financial system can absorb, even as Eric's personal wager is escaping his control.

First appears in chapter 4

A Sufi rap artist whose funeral procession adds to the day's gridlock. Eric respects him as a public figure whose music crossed boundaries, while the crowds mourning him embody forms of feeling that resist Eric's data-driven detachment.

First appears in chapter 5

A freelance photographer who follows Eric through the city in hopes of capturing his humiliation. Petrescu specializes in striking public figures with pies and turning the assault into a media image.

Also known as Benno Levin

First appears in chapter 6

A former employee of Eric's firm who writes a confession addressed to the man he blames for his ruin. Living under the name Benno Levin, he watches Eric's progress across the city and prepares for an encounter that gives the day's security warning its personal source.