Product Description

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.

By turns comic and tragic, but always passionate, wildly inventive, and touched with an indelible humanity, this debut novel is a powerful, deeply felt story of searching: for the past, family, and truth.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #43229 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-01
• Released on: 2005-08-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Amazon.com Review
The simplest thing would be to describe Everything Is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer's accomplished debut, as a novel about the Holocaust. It is, but that really fails to do justice to the sheer ambition of this book. The main story is a grimly familiar one. A young Jewish American--who just happens to be called Jonathan Safran Foer--travels to the Ukraine in the hope of finding the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis. He is aided in his search by Alex Perchov, a naïve Ukrainian translator, Alex's grandfather (also called Alex), and a flatulent mongrel dog named Sammy Davis Jr. Jr. On their journey through Eastern Europe's obliterated landscape they unearth facts about the Nazi atrocities and the extent of Ukrainian complicity that have implications for Perchov as well as Safran Foer. This narrative is not, however, recounted from (the character) Jonathan Safran Foer's perspective. It is relayed through a series of letters that Alex sends to Foer. These are written in the kind of broken Russo-English normally reserved for Bond villains or Latka from Taxi. Interspersed between these letters are fragments of a novel by Safran Foer--a wonderfully imagined, almost magical realist, account of life in the shtetl before the Nazis destroyed it. These are in turn commented on by Alex, creating an additional metafictional angle to the tale.

If all this sounds a little daunting, don't be put off; Safran Foer is an extremely funny as well as intelligent writer who combines some of the best Jewish folk yarns since Isaac Bashevis Singer with a quite heartbreaking meditation on love, friendship, and loss. --Travis Elborough, Amazon.co.uk

From Publishers Weekly
What would it sound like if a foreigner wrote a novel in broken English? Foer answers this question to marvelous effect in his inspired though uneven first novel. Much of the book is narrated by Ukrainian student Alex Perchov, whose hilarious and, in their own way, pitch-perfect malapropisms flourish under the influence of a thesaurus. Alex works for his family's travel agency, which caters to Jews who want to explore their ancestral shtetls. Jonathan Safran Foer, the novel's other hero, is such a Jew an American college student looking for the Ukrainian woman who hid his grandfather from the Nazis. He, Alex, Alex's depressive grandfather and his grandfather's "seeing-eye bitch" set out to find the elusive woman. Alex's descriptions of this "very rigid search" and his accompanying letters to Jonathan are interspersed with Jonathan's own mythical history of his grandfather's shtetl. Jonathan's great-great-great-great-great-grandmother Brod is the central figure in this history, which focuses mostly on the 18th and 19th centuries. Though there are some moments of demented genius here, on the whole the historical sections are less assured. There's a whiff of kitsch in Foer's jolly cast of pompous rabbis, cuckolded usurers and sharp-tongued widows, and the tone wavers between cozy ethnic humor, heady pontification and sentimental magic-realist whimsy. Nonetheless, Foer deftly handles the intricate story-within-a-story plot, and the layers of suspense build as the shtetl hurtles toward the devastation of the 20th century while Alex and Jonathan and Grandfather close in on the object of their search. An impressive, original debut. (Apr. 16)Forecast: Eagerly awaited since an excerpt was featured in the New Yorker's 2001 "Debut Fiction" issue, Everything Is Illuminated comes reasonably close to living up to the hype. Rights have so far been sold in 12 countries, the novel is a selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club and a main selection of Traditions Book Club, and Foer will embark on an author tour expect lively sales.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This highly imaginative debut novel features a protagonist with the same name as the author. The fictional Jonathan Safran Foer, also a writer, travels to Eastern Europe after his junior year in college. His mission, as he ventures through the farmlands, is to find Augustine, who may have saved the grandfather he never knew from the Nazis. Accompanying Jonathan on his quixotic quest is Alex, a young Ukrainian translator who speaks hilariously fractured English. The fabled history of his grandfather's shtetl, or village, is juxtaposed with events in the present using comedy interspersed with tragedy. 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. Recommended for all libraries. Molly Abramowitz, Silver Spring, MD
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

what am i missing here?
i have tried, on three separate occasions, to get into this book. each and every time, i am unable to pass the 3rd chapter. i kept thinking, what am i missing? the astronomical hype surrounding this book would lead one to believe that their lives are somehow of lesser quality should the miss the revelations contained within this supposed masterwork. am i of an inferior intellect that i cannot simply get past what seems like (to me, at least) the overtly gimmicky and contrived 'out there' writing style? am i the only one that found the cliched use of borat-like 'wierd foriegner' butchered english offensive? i know several eastern europeans (with varying degrees of english speaking ability) who sound and act nothing like this. i mean, come on.

its like this guy has gone out of his way to alienate the reader by bombarding us with a three ring circus of every writing techniques he has ever learned. and whats with the 'clever' use of the authors name as the main character? apparently the meaning is too deep for a mere peon like myself.

my point is, you dont have to scream to tell a story. this dude needs a large slice of humble pie and a tall glass of shut the hell up.

I hate this book, even though it inspired the movie, which I like
My review title says it all. This book is so utterly obnoxious, I don't know where to begin. For starters-----and, this will render my review pointless to many, which is fine-----I didn't finish it. I found the book to be so utterly horrid, I couldn't finish it. I read about half of it, putting it down, and picking up another book in its place.

The book gets the first star, for I liked the horrid English from Alexander, which I enjoyed. However, for some reason, I wonder if the author has some sort of repressed sexual tension, as he seems unable to keep sexual things of a middle-school locker-room nature out of the dialog, which I found to be most obnoxious.

The book gets the second star, for it inspired the movie, which I enjoyed. It's funny, because the movie has been criticized for 'straying' from the book too much, namely in the trippy backstory segments of the book (which I found to be most intolerable). I'm happy Liev Schreiber did so, otherwise I would've found his movie to be as intolerable as the book. I'll stop there, so this doesn't become a positive review for the movie.

In closing, I once again openly admit to not finishing this book, and invite any and all flaming that may ensue in that regards. But, alas, how can I be expected to finish a book which annoys me to no end? At least I gave it a shot, eh? If this is the kind of writing and storytelling which receives accolades today, then I think I might stop trying out these "modern classics", and stick with the old greats (Dostoyevski being my favorite author, for the record).

One of the best books ever written
This is my second favorite book. The imagination and narration is simply fantastic. I have never experienced imagination as beautiful as the telling of TrachimBrod. Every chapter about this city is glowing with incredible anecdotes and interesting characters. In fact, Brod is by far the best character i have ever encountered.
And Trachimbrod is just about a third of the whole story!
This book is modern literature, which is what i like about it most. Beyond its plot and characters and historical look at the lasting effects of WWII, there are themes of writing itself, of communication, of stories told 3rd or 4th handedly (Foer the character writing about Trachimbrod through a book about Trachimbrod, then us reading his writing). I am willing to bet colleges will start using this book in certain curriculum, like modern American literature or something like that.
Read this book, and read every detail of it and Foer's imagination will overwhelm you.