Oskar Schell

The novel's principal narrator and protagonist, Oskar is a precocious, psychologically troubled nine-year-old, who occasionally claims he is older or younger to get sympathy or respect. His business card describes him comprehensively as an "inventor, jewelry designer, jewelry fabricator, amateur entomologist, Francophile, vegan, origamist, pacifist, percussionist, amateur astronomer, computer consultant, amateur archeologist," and collector of various things. He keeps a thick scrapbook entitled Stuff That Happened to Me. His favorite book, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, is far beyond his reading level.

Oskar lives in a fifth floor apartment with his lawyer mother, who forbids him to watch television but allows him to view videos she has authorized and to read anything. He is an avid user of the Internet and fellow students consider him a nerd. Oskar appears to have had emotional problems even before his beloved Dad, Thomas Schell, Jr., a jewelry...