Everything Is Illuminated

NEW YORK TIMES 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." (Time) 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. 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. 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. “Imagine a novel as verbally cunning as A Clockwork Orange, as harrowing as The Painted Bird, as exuberant and twee as Candide, and you have Everything Is Illuminated . . . Read it, and you'll feel altered, chastened—seared in the fire of something new.” — Washington Post “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.” — Philadelphia Inquirer

A young man arrives in the Ukraine with a tattered photograph, a bad translator, a man haunted by memories and an undersexed guide dog - he is looking for the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis. What they find turns all their worlds upside down.

Everything Is Illuminated is Jonathan Safran Foer's bestselling novel of a search for truth The inspiration for the Liev Schreiber film, starring Elijah Wood A young man arrives in the Ukraine, clutching in his hand a tattered photograph. He is searching for the woman who fifty years ago saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Unfortunately, he is aided in his quest by Alex, a translator with an uncanny ability to mangle English into bizarre new forms; a "blind" old man haunted by memories of the war; and an undersexed guide dog named Sammy Davis Jr, Jr. What they are looking for seems elusive -- a truth hidden behind veils of time, language and the horrors of war. What they find turns all their worlds upside down . . . 'An astonishing feat of writing: hilariously funny and deeply serious, a gripping narrative. Extraordinary' The Times 'One of the most impressive novel debuts of recent years' Joyce Carol Oates, The Times Literary Supplement 'A first novel of startling originality' Jay McInerney, Observer 'Showy, smart. Made me laugh a lot' Susan Sontag, The Times Literary Supplement 'It seems hard to believe that such a young writer can have such a deep understanding of both comedy and tragedy' Erica Wagner, The Times 'A box of treasures' LA Times' 'Funny, life affirming, brilliant'Esquire Jonathan Safran Foer was born in 1977. He is the author of Everything is Illuminated, which won the National Jewish Book Award and the Guardian First Book award; Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which is now a major film starring Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock; and Eating Animals. He is also the editor of A Convergence of Birds.

Longlisted for the 2017 International Dylan Thomas Prize God asked Abraham to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac, and Abraham replied obediently, "Here I am." This is the story of a fracturing family in a moment of crisis. Over the course of three weeks in present-day Washington, D.C., three sons watch their parents' marriage falter and their family home fall apart. Meanwhile, a large catastrophe is engulfing another part of the world: a massive earthquake devastates the Middle East, sparking a pan-Arab invasion of Israel. With global upheaval in the background and domestic collapse in the foreground, Jonathan Safran Foer asks us: What is the true meaning of home? Can one man ever reconcile the conflicting duties of his many roles– husband, father, son? And how much of life can a person ultimately bear?

“Cerebral and capacious, Teju Cole’s novel asks what it means to roam freely.”—The New York Times (One of the 25 Most Significant New York City Novels From the Last 100 Years) “Influential . . . makes you think about what kind of city is revealed to us based on where we cannot go.”—Katie Kitamura, bestselling author of Intimacies ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, NPR • WINNER: PEN/Hemingway Award, Rosenthal Foundation Award, New York City Book Award Along the streets of Manhattan, a young Nigerian doctor named Julius doing his residency wanders aimlessly. The walks are a release from the tightly regulated mental environment of work, and they give him the opportunity to process his relationships, his recent breakup, his present, his past. Though he’s navigating the busy parts of town, the impression of countless faces does nothing to assuage his feelings of isolation. Julius crisscrosses social territory as well, encountering people from different cultures and classes who provide insight on his journey—which takes him to Brussels, to the Nigeria of his youth, and into the most unrecognizable facets of his own soul. Seething with intelligence and written in a clear, rhythmic voice, Open City is a haunting, mature, profound work about our country and our world. FINALIST: National Book Critics Circle Award, Young Lions Fiction Award • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Economist, Newsweek, The New Republic, New York Daily News, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Seattle Times, Minneapolis Star Tribune, GQ, Salon, Slate, New York, The Week, The Kansas City Star, Kirkus Reviews, The Guardian, Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, The Irish Times

Jonathan Safran Foer emerged as one of the most original writers of his generation with his best-selling debut novel, Everything Is Illuminated. Now, with humor, tenderness, and awe, he confronts the traumas of our recent history. What he discovers is solace in that most human quality, imagination. Meet Oskar Schell, an inventor, Francophile, tambourine player, Shakespearean actor, jeweler, pacifist, correspondent with Stephen Hawking and Ringo Starr. He is nine years old. And he is on an urgent, secret search through the five boroughs of New York. His mission is to find the lock that fits a mysterious key belonging to his father, who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11. An inspired innocent, Oskar is alternately endearing, exasperating, and hilarious as he careens from Central Park to Coney Island to Harlem on his search. Along the way he is always dreaming up inventions to keep those he loves safe from harm. What about a birdseed shirt to let you fly away? What if you could actually hear everyone's heartbeat? His goal is hopeful, but the past speaks a loud warning in stories of those who've lost loved ones before. As Oskar roams New York, he encounters a motley assortment of humanity who are all survivors in their own way. He befriends a 103-year-old war reporter, a tour guide who never leaves the Empire State Building, and lovers enraptured or scorned. Ultimately, Oskar ends his journey where it began, at his father's grave. But now he is accompanied by the silent stranger who has been renting the spare room of his grandmother's apartment. They are there to dig up his father's empty coffin.

NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARDS FINALIST • “Part personal quest, part testament, and all thoughtfully, compassionately written.”—The Washington Post “Esther Safran Foer is a force of nature: a leader of the Jewish people, the matriarch of America’s leading literary family, an eloquent defender of the proposition that memory matters. And now, a riveting memoirist.”—Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR Esther Safran Foer grew up in a home where the past was too terrible to speak of. The child of parents who were each the sole survivors of their respective families, for Esther the Holocaust loomed in the backdrop of daily life, felt but never discussed. The result was a childhood marked by painful silences and continued tragedy. Even as she built a successful career, married, and raised three children, Esther always felt herself searching. So when Esther’s mother casually mentions an astonishing revelation—that her father had a previous wife and daughter, both killed in the Holocaust—Esther resolves to find out who they were, and how her father survived. Armed with only a black-and-white photo and a hand-drawn map, she travels to Ukraine, determined to find the shtetl where her father hid during the war. What she finds reshapes her identity and gives her the opportunity to finally mourn. I Want You to Know We’re Still Here is the poignant and deeply moving story not only of Esther’s journey but of four generations living in the shadow of the Holocaust. They are four generations of survivors, storytellers, and memory keepers, determined not just to keep the past alive but to imbue the present with life and more life.

Jonathan Safran Foer has long had a passion for the work of the twentieth-century American assemblage artist Joseph Cornell. Inspired by Cornell�s avian-themed boxes, and suspecting that they would be similarly inspiring to others, Foer began to write letters. The responses he received from luminaries of American writing were nothing short of astounding. Twenty writers generously contributed pieces of prose and poetry that are as eclectic as they are imaginative, and the result is a unique collaborative project and one of the most significant engagements of literature with art for many years.