Everything is Illuminated

Jonathan Safran Foer

Jun 2003 · Penguin UK

About this ebook

THE INTERNATIONALLY BESTSELLING NOVEL

ADAPTED INTO A FEATURE FILM WITH ELIJAH WOOD

From the bestselling author of Here I Am, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and We are the Weather - a hilarious, life-affirming and utterly original novel about the search for truth

'Gripping, hilariously funny and deeply serious. An astonishing feat of writing' The Times

'One of the most impressive novel debuts of recent years' Joyce Carol Oates, Times Literary Supplement

'A first novel of startling originality' Jay McInerney, Observer

'It seems hard to believe that such a young writer can have such a deep understanding of both comedy and tragedy' Erica Wagner, The Times

A young man arrives in the Ukraine, clutching in his hand a tattered photograph. He is searching for the woman who fifty years ago saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Unfortunately, he is aided in his quest by Alex, a translator with an uncanny ability to mangle English into bizarre new forms; a "blind" old man haunted by memories of the war; and an undersexed guide dog named Sammy Davis Jr, Jr. What they are looking for seems elusive -- a truth hidden behind veils of time, language and the horrors of war.

What they find turns all their worlds upside down...

Ratings and reviews

I listen to books whilst driving at work via the "read aloud" function, so I appreciate that some of the subtleties and arrangement will have been lost on me, but despite really enjoying the interpreters sections and early parts of the novel, I found this a very hard, confusing and dense listen and, I regret to admit, I gave up after 239 pages.

nothing like it. just adored it.

Best book ever

About the author

Jonathan Safran Foer is the author of Everything Is Illuminated, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Eating Animals and Here I Am. He has also edited a new modern edition of the sacred Jewish Haggadah. Everything Is Illuminated won several literary prizes, including the National Jewish Book Award and the Guardian First Book Award. He edited the anthology A Convergence of Birds: Original Fiction and Poetry Inspired by the Work of Joseph Cornell, and his stories have been published in the Paris Review, Conjunctions and the New Yorker. Jonathan Safran Foer teaches Creative Writing at New York University.