num_pages: 6
description: At once hilarious and deeply moving, Jonathan Safran Foer's brilliant debut novel juxtaposes a boastful young Ukrainian guide -- whose endearingly mangled English makes for one of the most wildly original narrations in memory -- with a self-deprecating American Jew in search of his family's roots in a long-forgotten Russian shtetl. As the seemingly mismatched pair pursues an odyssey through post-Soviet Ukraine, they discover a common ground that illuminates if not everything, then at least the resilience of the human spirit and the redemptive power of friendship. Writing for The New York Times, Francine Prose said of Everything Is Illuminated: "Not since ... A Clockwork Orange has the English language been simultaneously mauled and energized with such brilliance."
language: English
title: Everything Is Illuminated
titlecomplete: Everything Is Illuminated
characters: Alexander Perchov, Jonathan Safran Foer, Lista, The Gypsy Girl, Brod, Grandfather (Everything Is Illuminated), The Kolker, Safran, Yankel D
genres: Fiction, Historical, Magical Realism, Jewish, Literature, Novels, Contemporary, Holocaust, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction
ratings_count: 177848
places: Trochenbrod, Ukraine
awards: awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, awardedAt: 1009872000000
name: Guardian First Book Award, awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: William Saroyan International Prize for Writing
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: Corine Internationaler Buchpreis
category: Rolf Heyne Buchpreis
publisher: Penguin