Samuel Klayman/Sammy Clay

At the start of the novel, Sammy Clay is a teenager living with his mother in Brooklyn. He is ambitious and wants to be seen as successful. He has told his mother, for example, that he is employed as an illustrator at Empire Novelty when he is in fact an inventory clerk. He has talent, but it is not until he meets Josef Kavalier that he is able to identify where those talents really lie. He is a competent and imaginative scriptwriter whose work captures the popular imagination. Joe spurs him to take action towards the dream he has long been contemplating—that of creating comics—but Sammy’s ambition and decisiveness are the driving forces that bring the Escapist to life. 

Sammy is willing to take risks and push for what he wants in the working world, but in his personal life, things are different. Both Rosa Saks and Joe guess at his sexuality before Sammy has accepted it himself. His tentative steps out of the closet with Tracy Bacon only take him so far. When he is sexually assaulted and almost arrested, all for being gay, he retreats and again conceals his sexuality. Following the death of Bacon in the war, Sammy marries Rosa, partly to protect himself. It takes his being forcibly outed on national television for Sammy to be freed from the prison he has built for himself. Sammy’s story ends on a hopeful note as he sets out for LA to begin a new screenwriting career there, unburdened by falsehoods and ready to live an authentic life.

Josef (“Joe”) Kavalier

The central comic-book hero created by Kavalier and Clay, the Escapist, is paralleled by Joe Kavalier, a real-life escape artist. As an adolescent in Prague, Joe trained as a magician and escapist before escaping to the United States to avoid the looming threat to Czech Jews. Having also trained at the Academy of Fine Art in Prague, Joe’s skills are quickly recognized by Sammy, and the cousins collaborate on comic books that quickly become successful.

Joe is fixated on the idea of freeing his family from the increasingly dangerous Czechoslovakia—all the more so after he hears that his father has been killed. He is deeply wounded when his brother, Thomas, is lost at sea on his way to New York. Joe escapes again, leaving his lover, Rosa, and his partner, Sam, for the war. Dogged by shame and guilt, Joe feels he can neither spend the money he has accrued nor return to Rosa after the war. However, his love for his son, Tommy, proves powerful enough to dissolve his self-imposed isolation. He makes contact with the boy, resulting in a reunion with Rosa and Sammy.

Rosa Saks 

Rosa is Joe’s lover and Sammy’s close friend and eventual wife. In the early sections of the novel Rosa is a Bohemian figure who lives with her larger-than-life father, Siegfried Saks, also known as Longman Harkoo. An artist, Joe is initially impressed with her drawings and “dreambooks.” She and Joe quickly become lovers, and when Thomas Kavalier is set to move to New York, Rosa is willing to become a parent figure to him. However, she does not get a chance to tell Joe that she is pregnant with his child before Joe hears the devastating news of Thomas’s death and leaves.

Rosa marries Sam, partly to protect her name, and partly to protect him. There is evidently a close bond between the pair, but it is not romantic. Rosa remains devoted to Joe in his absence, and when he returns, she is still very much in...