<strong><em>NEW YORK TIMES</em> BESTSELLER. Jonathan Safran Foer's 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." (<em>Time</em>)</strong><br/><br/>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. <br/><br/>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. <br/><br/>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. <br/><br/>"Imagine a novel as verbally cunning as <em>A Clockwork Orange</em>, as harrowing as <em>The Painted Bird</em>, as exuberant and twee as <em>Candide</em>, and you have <em>Everything Is Illuminated</em> . . . Read it, and you'll feel altered, chastened--seared in the fire of something new." -- <em>Washington Post </em><br/><br/>"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." -- <em>Philadelphia Inquirer</em>