Everything Is Illuminated

Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer’s first book, was originally published by Houghton Mifflin in 2002. A portion of the book had been published previously in The New Yorker. The novel won several awards, including the National Jewish Book Award, the Guardian First Book Award, and the Young Lions Fiction Award. The book received rave reviews but also received some criticism for its fictional portrayal of historical events. In response to this criticism, Safran Foer indicated that the novel was a fictional narrative that explored the intersection between history, fact, memory, and truth. The novel can also be considered autofiction because of its close parallels to Safran Foer’s own history. In 2005, the book was adapted into a film directed by Liev Schreiber, starring Elijah Wood and Eugene Hütz.

This study guide refers to the eBook edition, published by First Mariner Books in 2015. To avoid confusion, this guide retains the anglicized spellings of Ukrainian city names reflected in the source text, including: Kiev instead of Kyiv, Odessa instead of Odesa, and Lvov instead of Lviv.

Content Warning: The source material contains descriptions of physical abuse, sexual assault, murder, and genocide. In addition, the source material reproduces offensive terms and stereotypes for Jewish people, Black people, and Romani people throughout, which are replicated in this guide only in direct quotation.