Everything is Illuminated
by Jonathan Safran Foer
Penguin, $116
The picture of Elijah Wood standing in a surreal field of sunflowers advertises the fact this novel has been adapted to film. Which could prompt readers to wait for the movie's release or head straight to a bookshop. I say make the second choice. Everything is Illuminated is an extraordinary achievement - let alone a first novel - that coaxes laughter and tears. Inspired by a similar trip taken by author Jonathan Safran Foer, it's the zany story of a young American who visits Ukraine to find the woman who saved his grandfather from Hitler. His straightforward quest, however, is complicated by a trio of misfits: a translator given to malapropisms; his apparently blind father, who serves as their driver, and the old man's 'seeing eye bitch' called Sammy Davis Jnr, Jnr. Past and present alternate, and while readers enjoy a folk tale about the inhabitants of the tourist's ancestral village, history marches up to them to perform a Nazi salute. Safran Foer's debut had his peers outdoing themselves with praise. Luminaries such as Joyce Carol Oates, Susan Sontag and Jay McInerney named Illuminated their book of the year.