Everything Is Illuminated (2002) (edit title/settings)

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• Jonathan: A young American writer, born in 1977. In 1997 he travels to Ukraine in order to research his grandfather's life. He wants to find his grandfather's hometown, Trachimbrod, and a woman named Augustine, who saved his grandfather from the Nazis.
• Alex: Alexander Perchov, Jonathan's guide throughout his trip to Ukraine. Also known as Sasha and Shapka. He is the same age as Jonathan. He writes and speaks in charmingly butchered English. Alex writes chapters for Jonathan's book and sends them to him. He also writes letters to Jonathan that critique his writing. Alex has an abusive father and dreams of a better life in America for his younger brother and himself.
• Little Igor: Alex's younger brother, whom Father calls "The Clumsy One" because he is always bruised.
• Father: Alex's father, who is also named Alex. He works for Heritage Touring, a travel agency that coordinates trips for American Jews to research their roots in Poland, Ukraine, and surrounding areas. He calls Alex "Shapka," meaning "fur hat."
• Mother: Alex's mother, whom he is always frustrating, or in Alex's words, "spleening." She works at a café.
• Grandfather: Alex's grandfather, who is also called Alex, although he was named Eli before the war. He is tormented by his memories of the war. Alex is a fat old man with gold teeth and a persistent five-o-clock shadow. He recently retired from Heritage Touring, his last of many employers. He has been depressed and temperamental ever since his wife's death from brain cancer two years earlier. He claims he is blind, and he has a seeing-eye bitch named Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior. Despite his claims, he is the driver for Jonathan's trip.
• Sammy Davis Junior Junior: Supposed to function as a seeing-eye dog. She is named after Grandfather's favorite singer, Sammy Davis, Jr. The youngest Alex refers to her as the "seeing-eye bitch" and claims she is deranged. She is always chewing her tail and anything else she can find.
• Augustine: The mysterious woman in a photograph who may have saved Jonathan's grandfather from the Holocaust.
• Yankel: The man that raised Brod, but never did tell her that he wasn't her real father.
• Kolker: Brod's husband. The father of her children.
• Herschel: A Jewish man--grandfather's best friend before the war-- who was killed by the Nazis when they hit Trachimbrod.
• Sasha: A nickname for Alex.
• Joseph: Add a description of this character.
• Sarah
• Lista
• Menachem
• Shapka: A nickname given to Alexander Perchov (translator) by his father because of the fur hat he would don even in the summer months.
• Shloim
• Shanda
• Hannah
• Abraham
• Isaac
• Cain
• Kovel
• Sofiowka

Quotes edit see section history

• “I will describe my eyes and then begin the story. My eyes are blue and resplendent. Now I will begin the story.”

• “I was sired in 1977, I dig to disseminate very much currency at famous nightclubs in Odessa.”

• “When we found each other, I was very flabbergasted by his appearance. This is an American? I thought. And also, This is a Jew? He was severely short. He wore spectacles and had diminutive hairs which were not split anywhere, but rested on his head like a Shapka. (If i were like Father, I might even have dubbed him Shapka.) He did not appear like either the Americans I had witnessed in magazines, with yellow hairs and muscles, or the Jews from history books, with no hair and prominent bones. He was wearing nor blue jeans nor the uniform. In truth, he did not look like anything special at all. I was underwhelmed to the maximum.”

• “I dreamt four nights ago of clock hands descending from the universe like rain, of the moon as a green eye, of mirrors and insects, of a love that never withdrew. It was not a the feeling of completeness that i so needed, but the feeling of not being so empty”

• “...this is a kiss. It is what happens when lips are puckered and pressed against something, sometimes other lips, sometimes a cheek, sometimes something else. It depends... This is my heart. You are touching it with your left hand, not because you're left-handed, although you might be, but because i am holding it against my heart. What you are feeling is the beating of my heart. It is what keeps me alive.”

• “You are the only person who has understood even a whisper of me, and I will tell you that I am the only person who has understood even a whisper of you.”

• “We burned with love for ourselves, all of us, starters of the fire we suffered --our love was the affliction for which only our love was the cure...”

• “I see something new, some manner in which her hairs produce shadows, or her lips summarize angles.”

• “One day you will do things for me that you hate. That is what it means to be a family.”

• “She massaged his dead hand and remembered the last time she had touched it. It was not death that had so attracted her to it, but the unknowability. The unattainability. He could never completely love her, not with all of himself. He could never be completely owned, and he could never own completely. Her desire had been sparked by the frustration of her desire.”

• “I do not think that there are any limits to how excellent we could make life seem.”

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• This is love, she thought, isn't it? When you notice someone's absence and hate that absence more than anything? More, even, than you love his presence?

  Highlighted by 76 Kindle customers

• Love me, because love doesn't exist, and I have tried everything that does.

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• One day you will do things for me that you hate. That is what it means to be a family.'

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• They reciprocated the great and saving lie—that our love for things is greater than our love for our love for things—willfully playing the parts they wrote for themselves, willfully creating and believing fictions necessary for life.

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• Brod's life was a slow realization that the world was not for her, and that for whatever reason, she would never be happy and honest at the same time.

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• She was a genius of sadness, immersing herself in it, separating its numerous strands, appreciating its subtle nuances. She was a prism through which sadness could be divided into its infinite spectrum.

  Highlighted by 55 Kindle customers

• He knew that I love you also means I love you more than anyone loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that no one loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that I love no one else, and never have loved anyone else, and never will love anyone else. He knew that it is, by love's definition, impossible to love two people.

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• 'I used to think that humor was the only way to appreciate how wonderful and terrible the world is, to celebrate how big life is. You know what I mean?' 'Yes, of course.' 'But now I think it's the opposite. Humor is a way of shrinking from that wonderful and terrible world.'

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• Everything is the way it is because everything was the way it was.

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• The Eskimos have four hundred words for snow, and the Jews have four hundred for schmuck.'

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Odessa, Ukraine: Where Alex and his family live.
• Trachimbrod: The small fictional village where Jonathan believes his ancestors lived. It is based off the real-life village Trochenbrod.
• Lvov, Ukraine: Where Alex meets Jonathan, and where their journey begins.
• America
• Rovno
• Upright Synagogue
• Kolld
• New York City
• Ghana
• Kolki
• Kiev

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Glossary edit see section history

• shtetl: A Yiddish word meaning "village" or "town".

Series & Lists edit see section history

Preceded by The Double, and followed by Unless.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Jonathan Safran Foer (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• National Jewish Book Awards (2001: Fiction)
• Guardian First Book Award (2002)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PS 3606 .O38 E84 2002
• Dewey: 818'.6

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary

Movie Connections edit see section history

• Everything Is Illuminated (IMDb)

More Books Like This edit see section history