Everything Is Illuminated

About this book

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. By turns comic and tragic but always passionate wildly inventive and touched with an indelible humanity this debut novel is a powerful deeply felt story of searching: for the past family and truth.