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Everything Is Illuminated
by Jonathan Safran Foer

Everything Is Illuminated Cover

Awards

2002 Guardian First Book Award
A New York Times Notable Book for 2002
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Powells.com Staff Pick

This book has been out for a few years, and maybe everyone has already read it. It's a story told in three ways: Jonathan Safran Foer is looking for someone who helped his grandfather escape the Nazis during World War II; Alex is the translator Foer hires when he gets to the Ukraine; and then there is the history of the town Foer's grandfather inhabited, which Foer is hoping to find. I enjoyed this book even with its hooks and cleverness. I liked the search for family history, and Alex's butchering of the English language provides needed comic relief. The story becomes more layered as it switches between the narrators and the town history, and you are not always sure where you are being lead, or sometimes what certain sections have to do with the larger story. It's a tragicomedy without the requisite happy ending, but with a fitting ending nonetheless.
Recommended by Diane, Powells.com

Review-a-Day   (What is Review-a-Day?)

"Foer exquisitely executes the book's best jokes: the way that Jonathan's minor flaws — his vanity, his American cluelessness, his tendency to patronize — filter through Alex's admiring portrait of the young man he calls his 'most premium friend' and 'the hero.' As the novel shades inexorably into the tragic mode, and as Alex comes to be a much better writer than Jonathan, with both a finer sense of truth and a more urgent understanding of the need for happy endings, his stumbling English incandesces into eloquence. And that alone is worth the price of admission." Laura Miller, Salon.com (read the entire Salon review)

Synopses & Reviews

From Powells.com:

Everything Is Illuminated is Jonathan Safran Foer's remarkable debut novel, the story of a young writer named Jonathan Safran Foer traveling in Eastern Europe to find out more about his family's history and its possible connection to (and escape from) the Holocaust. The stories are told through the intertwining voices of Alex, Foer's Ukrainian translator, driver, and general cultural companion, and Foer's novelization of the story of his grandparents. Although Foer's story is moving and intriguing, blending history and fable, Alex's hilarious voice (both archaically formal and littered with pop culture idioms) steals the show. As the novel progresses, however, Alex's rocky English steadily improves, just as his worldview matures into something more tragic and complex. A sharp, startling new voice from an intelligent and passionate young writer, Everything Is Illuminated prompted Adrienne Miller of Esquire to proclaim "One of the most impressive first novels in a long time....[T]his book is, as its name implies, brilliant." Jill, Powells.com

Publisher Comments:

Exuberant and wise, hysterically funny and deeply moving, Everything Is Illuminated is an astonishing tour de force. In the summer after his junior year of college, a writer — also named Jonathan Safran Foer — journeys to the farmlands of eastern Europe. Armed with only a yellowing photograph, he sets out to find Augustine, the woman who might or might not be a link to the grandfather he never knew — the woman who, he has been told, saved his grandfather from the Nazis.

Guided by the unforgettable Alex, his young Ukrainian translator, who writes in a sublimely butchered English, an amorous dog named Sammy Davis, Junior, and an old man haunted by his memories of the war, Jonathan is led on a quixotic search across a devastated landscape and back into an unexpected past. Braided into this story is the novel Jonathan is writing, a magical fable of his grandfather's village in Ukraine, a tapestry of startling symmetries that unite generations across time. In a counterpoint of voices blending high comedy and deep tragedy, the search moves back in time, the fantastical history moves forward, and they meet in a heart-stopping scene of extraordinary power.

Passionate, wildly inventive, and marked by an indelible humanity, Everything Is Illuminated mines the black holes of history and is ultimately a story about searching: for people and places that no longer exist, for the hidden truths that haunt every family, and for the delicate but necessary tales that link past and future.

Review:

"Comedy and pathos are braided together with extraordinary skill in a haunting debut." Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

Review:

"[A]n inventive but immature fictional excursion, sometimes pleasant, sometimes just pretentious....Much of the novel's humor derives from Alexander's fractured English and his posturing antics. That humor, though bought rather cheaply, is deft, but the too frequent flights of lyricism stink of affectation....[N]ot surprisingly, [the Holocaust] proves to be too big a subject for [Foer's] undeveloped talent." Brooke Allen, Atlantic Monthly

Review:

"One of the most impressive first novels in a long time....[T]his book is, as its name implies, brilliant." Adrienne Miller, Esquire

Review:

"It's hard to get through the first chapters of Everything Is Illuminated. The problem is, you keep laughing out loud, losing your place, starting again, then stopping because you're tempted to call your friends and read them long sections of Jonathan Safran Foer's assured, hilarious prose....Everything Is Illuminated is endearing, accomplished ? and (to quote Alex one last time) definitely premium." Francine Prose, The New York Times Book Review

Review:

"Generations become united across time in this fanciful tale, as Foer, the author, gives the reader a contemporary version of 19th-century Jewish drama — one that blends laughter and tears." Library Journal

Review:

"Foer has written a glittering first novel...with great humor, sympathy, charm and daring. Every page is illuminated." Jeffrey Eugenides, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Middlesex

Review:

"Extraordinarily gifted...this young man also happens to possess something approaching wisdom. Don't just check him out. Read him." Russell Banks, author of The Sweet Hereafter

Review:

"A zestfully imagined novel of wonders both magical and mundane....He will win your admiration, and he will break your heart." Joyce Carol Oates, author of We Were the Mulvaneys

Synopsis:

With only a yellowing photograph in hand, a young man — also named Jonathan Safran Foer — sets out to find the woman who may or may not have saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Accompanied by an old man haunted by memories of the war; an amorous dog named Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior; and the unforgettable Alex, a young Ukrainian translator who speaks in a sublimely butchered English, Jonathan is led on a quixotic journey over a devastated landscape and into an unexpected past.

Synopsis:

A writer journeys to the farmlands of eastern Europe to find Augustine, the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Passionate and marked by an indelible humanity, "Everything Is Illuminated" mines the black holes of history and is ultimately a story about searching: for people and places that no longer exist and for the tales that link past and future.

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About the Author

Jonathan Safran Foer was born in 1977. He is the editor of A Convergence of Birds and his stories have been published in The Paris Review and The New Yorker. This is his first novel, which appeared on Best Books of 2002 lists internationally, won several literary prizes, including the National Jewish Book Award and The Guardian First Book Award, and has been published in twenty-four countries.
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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 3 comments:
brunettegal418, January 2, 2008 (view all comments by brunettegal418)
This was truly one the most cleverly written books I have ever read. The character Alex's narration in his butchered English shine a humourous light on the more deep, though churning, and moving aspects of this book. Not only does Jonathan Safran Foer look into the past, but he shines a light on future generations. This book seems highley personal with a location in Ukraine, characters in need of ESL, and a Jewish ansectory; yet after reading this book one feels more enlightened about everyone's past, and the future we are all a part of. This book must be read by everyone!
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Sterling Scott, February 22, 2007 (view all comments by Sterling Scott)
Emotional in every aspect! This is not a novel where you can put on autopilot and simply read through it. Uniquely put together. I've never read a book that was written like this one.
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shadow8pro, September 11, 2006 (view all comments by shadow8pro)
Epic and still intimate. A fantastic work (in every respect). A great addition to the tradition of Jewish-American literature.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780060529703
Author:
Foer, Jonathan Safran
Publisher:
Harper Perennial
Location:
New York
Subject:
Literary
Subject:
World war, 1939-1945
Subject:
Grandfathers
Subject:
Young men
Subject:
Americans
Subject:
Humorous fiction
Subject:
Ukraine
Subject:
Novelists
Subject:
Domestic fiction
Subject:
World War, 19
Subject:
Bildungsromans
Subject:
General Fiction
Copyright:
2003
Edition Number:
1st Perennial ed.
Series Volume:
CM-8
Publication Date:
April 1, 2003
Binding:
Paperback
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Pages:
288
Dimensions:
8.02x5.40x.74 in. .56 lbs.
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