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Everything Is Illuminated: A Novel
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780060529703
ISBN: 0060529709
Label: Harper Perennial
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 288
Publication Date: April 01, 2003
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Release Date: April 01, 2003
Studio: Harper Perennial
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Editorial 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
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.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - 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 ... Read More
Rating:  - 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 ... Read More
Rating: - everything you could wish and fear life to be
This is by far, my favorite book of all time. Foer has an amazing ability to cover all the ranges of human emotion, from comedy to intense pain and sadness. The characters are so beautifully developed and complex; unreal enough to make them magical, but real enough to make you wish they were alive. Granted, the book is a little slow in the beginning, it took me quite a few weeks to read the first 2/3rds of the book, but then one night to read the last 1.3rd. Foer sets up a story that spans over many generations, ... Read More
Rating:  - Had to Abandon After Page 30
Alex the Ukrainian's dialog is written with such obvious and desperate attempts at comedy, I couldn't take it any more.
It wasn't even funny on page one.
I'd rather not read an entire book constructed of amateurish caricatures pulled from the coddled mind of a precocious 20-something.
Not my idea of a good time.
Rating:  - An illuminating book
A very sad but true story and it shows that humankind has a long way to go before we can live up to the meaning of "Human".
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