Everything Is Illuminated (Magill’s Literary Annual 2003)
At a glance:
- Author: Jonathan Safran Foer
- First Published: 2002
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: 1791-1998
- Setting: Odessa, Lutsk, Lvov, and Trachimbrod, Ukraine
- Principal Characters: Jonathan Safran Foer, Alexander Perchov, Grandfather, Brod, Yankel, Shalom/Safran, Safran, Zosha, Gypsy, Lista, Sammy Davis Junior Junior
- Genres: Long fiction
- Subjects: Children, United States or Americans, Twentieth century, Nineteenth century, 1940’s, World War II, 1930’s, Immigration or emigration, Jews or Jewish life, War, Eighteenth century, Storytelling, Accidents, Adoption or adopted children, Nazism or Nazis, Letters, Eastern Europe or eastern Europeans, Holocaust, Jewish, Old age or elderly people, Russia or Russian people
- Locales: Odessa, Ukraine
Jonathan Safran Foer’s remarkable first novel explores Jewish life in the Ukraine during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Everything Is Illuminated is, however, much more. It is as much about the nature of storytelling as about the story it tells. Foer’s style and narrative technique make the impact of his dramatic, funny, sad story even greater.
Foer is also one of the protagonists, visiting the Ukraine in 1997 seeking Augustine, a woman who saved his grandfather, Safran, during the Holocaust. (The novel is inspired...
[The entire page is 2075 words long]
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