Everything Is Illuminated

Metafiction is a style or strategy of narrative construction in which the author purposefully draws the reader's attention to the narrative itself, its conception and process, and its reality as a work of fiction. By doing so, the author continually reminds the reader that what they are reading is a fictional narrative and blurs the boundaries between the realities of the book and the reader. The most obvious example of this device in Everything is Illuminated is a character named Jonathan Safran Foer whose appearance, lifestyle, occupation, and history seem to closely parallel the author. Metafiction highlights the space between the two Jonathans. By putting a character with his own name into the work, Safran Foer plays with the distinction between this fictional world and our reality. The metafictional strategy works with his use of magical realism to create a more layered narrative. This strategy also brings up questions of genre, leaving the reader to wonder if the novel is autofiction, complete fiction, or somewhere in between.