Hooray! You have added the first book to your bookshelf. Check it out now!
[−]
  • Search Digit-count Valid ISBN Invalid ISBN Valid Barcode Invalid Barcode
Blog this item

Everything is Illuminated

By Jonathan Safran Foer

(385)

| Paperback | 9780141008257

Like Everything is Illuminated?
Join aNobii to see if your friends read it, and discover similar books!

Sign up for free

Book Description

The simplest thing would be to describe Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer's accomplished debut, as a novel about the Shoah. 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 hContinue

The simplest thing would be to describe Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer's accomplished debut, as a novel about the Shoah. 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 bitch, 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 and Latka from the US television series Taxi. (Sentences such as "It is mammoth honour for me write for a writer, especially when he is American writer, like Ernest Hemingway"; "It is bad and popular habit for people in Ukraine to take things without asking" are the norm.) Interspersed between these letters are fragments of a novel by "Safran Foer"--a wonderfully imagined, almost magical realist, account of life in the Shetl 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. Admittedly he has an annoying habit of capitalising great chunks of text, but minor typographical nuances are easy to ignore in a book that combines some of the best Jewish folk yarns since Isaac Bashevis Singer with a quite heartbreaking meditation on love, friendship and loss.

Critics

  • Guile by the mile

    Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer 276pp, Hamish Hamilton, £14.99 Perhaps because they saw Bambi at an impressionable age, those in the generation of American artists born since the late 1960s are marked by a terror of sentimentality. ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

  • Everything is Illuminated

    A 20-year-old Jewish American, Jonathan Safran Foer, goes in search of his roots in the Ukraine and is accompanied by his translator, Alex (also 20), and Alex's grandfather. The result is an absorbing story, hilarious and heartbreaking. Foer sets out ... (read full critics)

    bookgroup published on Tue, 14 Sep 2010

21 Reviews

Login or Sign Up to write a review

  • 10 people find this helpful

    Definitely one of the books of my life.
    It spoke to me, linking everything to everything else, inside and outside, with white strings made of words, with words made of feelings, with feelings made of everywaves, linking each nowhere to everywhere inside and outside.

    Is this helpful?

    Zu said on Jul 21, 2008 about the Hardcover edition | 5 feedbacks

  • 4 people find this helpful

    as Alex would put it: "very premium". Jonathan, his translator Alex, Alex's grandfather (who claims he is blind but is the driver) and his allegedly disturbed seeing-eye bitch undertake an amazing journey through Ukraine to find the village of Trachimbrod.
    chasing Augustine, the past meets the ... (continue)

    as Alex would put it: "very premium". Jonathan, his translator Alex, Alex's grandfather (who claims he is blind but is the driver) and his allegedly disturbed seeing-eye bitch undertake an amazing journey through Ukraine to find the village of Trachimbrod.
    chasing Augustine, the past meets the present and modern English meets Alex. nothing will ever be the same...and everything is illuminated.
    unputdownable.

    Is this helpful?

    disastrino said on Oct 29, 2008 | Add your feedback

  • 3 people find this helpful

    What a beautiful and unusual book this is!
    Jonathan Safran Foer is a very talented writer, and although the first pages of the novel can seem a bit confusing, once you get into the story you feel completely absorbed by the plot and the characters...

    Is this helpful?

    Miss Piggott said on Jul 26, 2007 | Add your feedback

  • 2 people find this helpful

    Everything is the way it is because everything was the way it was.

    Memory: It is an ugly thing.
    One can't help digging for one's past, but memories hurt and uncover oneself more than one can ever imagine.
    The past is the present is the future is the past... That's what this book is made of ... (continue)

    Everything is the way it is because everything was the way it was.

    Memory: It is an ugly thing.
    One can't help digging for one's past, but memories hurt and uncover oneself more than one can ever imagine.
    The past is the present is the future is the past... That's what this book is made of.

    Is this helpful?

    Chiara L'Onironauta said on Dec 16, 2011 | Add your feedback

  • Very evocative

    I guess it's one of those book you love or hate because in the end it doesn't boil down to anything and it tells it all.

    I loved it.

    Is this helpful?

    fran_ces said on Aug 26, 2011 | Add your feedback

  • Alex's story is a bit interesting. But the letters and the other plots are boring. I can't help abandoning the book afte 30+ pages.

    Is this helpful?

    Waleswong said on Apr 11, 2011 | Add your feedback

Book Details

Improve data of this book

Prices Change currency & sellers

ISBN Edition List Sale Seller
9780141008257 Paperback $14.47 $9.97 The Book Depository
Other editions →
+ 3 copies tradable: 1 in USA →
Added to Shelf Added to Wish List

Inline Translation Mode

Left click to navigate, right click to translate.

inline translation guide

or close

Inline translation is not ready for this page yet.

Inline translation mode.

Share this page with your friends.

The viewport has not loaded.