Product Description

"An astonishing feat" 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1918 in Books
• Published on: 2003-06-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Amazon.co.uk 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 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. --Travis Elborough

Review
'An astonishing feat' The Times

Jonathan Safran Foer's first book is a dazzling display of linguistic virtuosity; at times confusing, occasionally irritating in its self-consciousness, this is a challenging, exciting novel from an exhilarating young writer. It consists of disparate strands which are skilfully woven together to create a work of intense richness. The main storyline is young Jonathan Safran Foer's search for the mysterious Augustine, a woman rumoured to have rescued his grandfather from the Nazis. All Jonathan has to go on is a crumpled photograph and some fragmentary maps. Foer is helped in his search by his Ukrainian guide and translator, Alex Perchov, who accompanies Jonathan on his quest, but also brings with him his perpetually 'reposing' grandfather and a flatulent bitch by the outlandish name of Sammy Davies Junior Junior. Alex is obsessed by the English language, and an early present of a thesaurus plays havoc with his conversational skills. He not only mauls the language, he positively tortures it, with the enthusiasm of a modern-day Mrs Malaprop, giving rise to such expressions as 'between a rock and a rigid (hard) place' and 'it captured (took) five very long hours'. Jonathan is also in the process of writing the historical account of what happened to his ancestors in the little shtetl of Trachimbrod. His history begins with the bizarre circumstances of his great-great-great-great-great grandmother's birth; her parents were drowned in the river Brod at the very moment she was born. The historical sections have an air of stereotypical Jewish humour about them, and there is even an air of Swiftian influence with the two rival religious factions, the Slouchers and the Uprights, recalling the Big-Endian/Little-Endian dispute in Gulliver's Travels. The illumination of the title is horrifyingly and graphically revealed, as the historical search seems set on a collision course with the 20th century. The truth about the Nazi atrocities in Trachimbrod is shocking, and the images Foer conjures up will remain etched on every reader's subconscious. Foer sets himself the unenviable task of creating a work where the style is as important as the substance. It is an indication of his power that he only rarely becomes swamped by the language to the detriment of his plot. This is a stirring debut from an exciting new voice. (Kirkus UK)

The London Standard
"Salman Rushdie and Franz Kafka are among the names that come to mind as one passage of bravura writing follows another."

Customer Reviews

Pretentious pile of poo
There can't be many books where the author seems to write prose that is an obstacle course for the reader. But anyone who manages to wade through Foer's pretentious book should get a gold medal. The Ukrainian Alex becomes tedious after a couple of paragraphs and the history of the shtetl should never have made it past a good editor. It's not clever, it's not funny and it's not worth your money.

The most perfect creation of beautiful fiction
I don't normally write reviews but if I had one mission in life it would be to get everyone to read this book. It is simply magnificent. It is so beautifully written that I had to buy two copies; one for best, and one in which I could underline all my favourite quotes (I might as well not bothered - I nearly underlined everything).

I will not explain the narrative as other reviewers have already done so, I just want to say that this book will make you laugh out loud, it will move you, and it will inspire in you feelings that you never knew you had. It is pure beauty. Please do not listen to those reviewers who gave this less than 4 stars.

This book would only seem pretentious to someone who could not appreciate great literature. This, and Foer's other novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, are the two finest books I have ever read. They instil a sense of magic in the everyday... which, in the face of the present state of society, is arguably invaluable.

I emplore you to read this book, adore it, and then buy it for everyone you love.

Quirky In The Right Ways
I bought this book on the strength of reading on the back cover that there was a dog in it called Sammy Davis Jr, Jr.

After reading the first page and wiping the tears from my eyes, I gleefully launched into the book walking down the pavement upon leaving the book store. To my initial disappointment the hilarity didn't continue unabated, and the book's structure took some getting used to - it is effectively a series of letters between two young men (one from the US and one from Ukraine who is armed with a thesaurus and has no fear of using it); interspersed with the narration of the two men's journey through Ukraine in search of the village of the American's forbears, which was wiped out by the Nazis; alongside a story based in the village, but from a much earlier time.

The humour does continue to thread its way through the story, but a human tenderness, and a great deal of pain also figure prominently as the story evolves.

Upon finishing the book I had been strongly moved, and had laughed out loud several times. I will enjoy reading it again.

As a word of caution though, if you don't enjoy word play, and weren't the type of kid who sat writing out their sentences including the words from their primary school weekly spelling list armed with a thesaurus and a determination to use the fanciest words possible at all times, then you may not find the humour quite so humorous!