With only a yellowing photograph in hand, a young man - also named Jonathan Safran Foer - sets out to find the woman who might or might 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.
As their adventure unfolds, Jonathan imagines the history of his grandfather's village, conjuring a magical fable of startling symmetries that unite generations across time. Lit by passion, fear, guilt, memory, and hope, the characters in Everything Is Illuminated mine the black holes of history. As the search moves back in time, the fantastical history moves forward, until reality collides with fiction in a heart-stopping scene of extraordinary power.
An arresting blend of high comedy and great tragedy, this is 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. Exuberant and wise, hysterically funny and deeply moving, EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED is an astonishing debut.
"Not since Anthony Burgess's novel 'A Clockwork Orange' has the English language been simultaneously mauled and energized with such brilliance and such brio." -- Francine Prose, New York Times Book Review
"Read it, and you'll feel altered, chastened -- seared in the fire of something new." -- Washington Post
"A book that illuminates so much with such odd and original beauty." --
Daniel Mendelsohn, New York New York Magazine [A] dazzling literary high-wire act . . . brilliant . . . The payoff is extraordinary: a fearless, acrobatic, ultimately haunting effort" --
Janet Maslin, New York Times "Not since Anthony Burgess's novel 'A Clockwork Orange' has the English language been simultaneously mauled and energized with such brilliance and such brio." -- Francine Prose, New York Times Book Review
"Read it, and you'll feel altered, chastened -- seared in the fire of something new." -- Washington Post
"A book that illuminates so much with such odd and original beauty." -- Daniel Mendelsohn, New York New York Magazine
[A] dazzling literary high-wire act . . . brilliant . . . The payoff is extraordinary: a fearless, acrobatic, ultimately haunting effort" -- Janet Maslin, New York Times
"Not since Anthony Burgess's novel 'A Clockwork Orange' has the English language been simultaneously mauled and energized with such brilliance and such brio." -- Francine Prose, New York Times Book Review
"Read it, and you'll feel altered, chastened -- seared in the fire of something new." -- Washington Post
"It's wonderful to think that the very young Jonathan Safran Foer...can be writing so well and with such lofty aspriation. It will be wonderful if he writes many more books." -- Adam Begley, The New York Observer Observer
"A book that illuminates so much with such odd and original beauty." -- Daniel Mendelsohn, New York New York Magazine
[A] dazzling literary high-wire act . . . brilliant . . . The payoff is extraordinary: a fearless, acrobatic, ultimately haunting effort" -- Janet Maslin, New York Times
"[An] enormously impressive first novel . . . Everything is illuminated, indeed, by this talented artist's furious, glorious starburst of prose." -- Dan Cryer, Newsday
"A zestfully imagined novel of wonders both magical and mundane. . .He will win your admiration, and he will break your heart."--Joyce Carol Oates
"Extraordinarily gifted. . .this young man also happens to possess something approaching wisdom. Don't just check him out. Read him."--Russell Banks
"It is one of the best novels I've ever been fortunate enough to hold in my hands."--Dale Peck
