Everything Is Illuminated [Paperback]

“Imagine a novel as verbally cunning asA Clockwork Orange, as harrowing asThe Painted Bird, as exuberant and twee asCandide, and you haveEverything Is Illuminated. . . Read it, and you'll feel altered, chastened — seared in the fire of something new.” —Washington Post

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. As his search moves back in time, the fantastical history moves forward, until reality collides with fiction in a heart-stopping scene of extraordinary power.

“A rambunctious tour de force of inventive and intelligent storytelling . . . Foer can place his reader’s hand on the heart of human experience, the transcendent beauty of human connections. Read, you can feel the life beating.” —Philadelphia Inquirer

Jonathan Safran Foer's best-selling debut --  a funny, moving...deeply felt novel about the dangers of confronting the past and the redemption that comes with laughing at it, even when that seems all but impossible. (Time)

“Not since Anthony Burgess’s novelA Clockwork Orangehas the English language been simultaneously mauled and energized with such brilliance and such brio.” — Francine Prose,New York Times Book Review,NolÛ