Jonathan S. Foer – Everything is Illuminated

Set in the contemporary Ukraine, Everything is Illuiminated tells the story of Alex, his Grandfather, and his Grandfather’s ‘Seeing-Eye Bitch’, Sammy Davies Jr Jr. Alex is a translator, and his father runs a company called Heritage Tours. This company allows Jewish Americans to come to Eastern Europe and unearth the stories of their families. This is how Alex meets Jonathan Safran Foer (the character), who is looking for a woman called Augustine. Jonathan believes that Augustine saved his grandfather from the Nazis, and Alex is to act as his translator.

The story is told through a series of letters from Alex to Jonathan, which are written in a very odd kind of broken English. These letters can be very funny, particularly in the first half of the book, and provide an opportunity for Safran Foer to poke fun at himself. However, it does mean that the book takes longer to read than you expect and understanding them can get tiresome after a while. The letters are interspersed with extracts from (the character) Jonathan’s novel, which tells the story of the village his grandfather was from before the Nazis destroyed it. These are written in very descriptive and practically magical realist style. They contain some beautiful imagery, but again can be difficult to read at times.

As the journey continues, things are ‘illuminated’ which have implications for Alex and his Grandfather as well as Jonathan Safran Foer. The comedy of the first half of the book starkly contrasts with the tragedy uncovered in the second half, which makes the novel all the more affecting. As well as providing a personal story about the horrors of World War II, the book deals with issues like contemporary anti-semitism and how far people who are caught up in war can be blamed for their actions. Although I feel that someone who didn’t like the style it was written in couldn’t enjoy Everything is Illuminated, it is a truly original book, which creates hilarity as well as poignancy via experiments with language.