# The Book of Jade — Character guide

> Key figures in The Book of Jade by David Park Barnitz.

- [Unknown](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_book_of_jade_se/characters/unknown_narrator.md): He is the book's presiding consciousness: a wealthy sensualist attended by Khaled and the moon-faced Leila, moving through censers, narghilés, and Hafiz's songs without pleasure. Having exhausted women, sciences, languag
- [the Absolute](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_book_of_jade_se/characters/the_absolute.md): Where Brahm once answered prayer, the narrator has proved him dead, leaving a vacancy at the center of a world stuffed with sensation. This absence haunts the Prelude: the speaker would laugh again 'in the olden fashion'
- [Death](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_book_of_jade_se/characters/death.md): Death presides over the collection's central visions: corpses reasoning in tombs, a dead tsar riding in triumph, a dead preacher blessing the dead. In these scenes the living are declared already rotten, their hearts 'th
- [Brahma](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_book_of_jade_se/characters/brahma.md): The Hindu creator god, invoked as a symbolic presence in the text.
- [Lo](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_book_of_jade_se/characters/lo.md): A named figure, possibly a lover or muse, appearing in the poetic sections.
- [Lili](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_book_of_jade_se/characters/lili.md): A named figure, possibly a variant of Leila or a separate character.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_book_of_jade_se/characters