Everything Is Illuminated

A Novel

By: Jonathan Safran Foer

Narrated by: Robert Petkoff

“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

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.

“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

Robert Petkoff has appeared on film and TV in Woody Allen’s Irrational Man, Madam Secretary, Elementary, The Good Wife, Chappelle’s Show, and Law & Order.
His Broadway credits include All The Way with Bryan Cranston, Anything Goes, Ragtime, Spamalot and Fiddler on the Roof. Mr. Petkoff is an Audie and Earphones award winner.

Great story

I loved it. Very funny. I loved the dog and the driving around Ukraine. Alex was wonderful.

The writing of the scene when Alex’s grandfather names his best friend

The broken English of Alex is unrealistic. Fun and funny, but not one wrong verb tense?

Interesting at times but feels confusing

Really hard to follow at times. Maybe I wasn’t fully focused and just rushing to get one more book read.

movie and book

It's odd that this book is more interesting because I watched the movie first. May be my opinion alone. But I love that the movie became the outcome of their letters. It's Alex's story, the movie has the image of him as who he wants to be seen as. His family is the better versions he begs Jonathan to write of. It made the book beautiful to me. Heartbreaking too. Some rant parts were a little much, but genius piecing together.

Um, what?

I went into this knowing that I know a lot of people who love JSF. And there was a lot to love here…. Until the last few chapters.

This novel reads like an origami project that you carefully fold and unfold and retold from different angles to get to your final project… but in the last five folds decide it’s too complicated and just make a cliche airplane and chuck it across the room.

The story is slow to present itself, then intricate and interesting, and then a very rushed cliche pile of shit.

Beautiful story, outstanding narration

It is a beautiful, meaningful story, many times hard to follow. Narration is outstanding, it goes straight to the heart. I recommend and will look for the movie.

Spectacular Narration

If ever you’re going to listen to a book, make it this one. The narrator’s performance illuminated this painfully beautiful story.

great double story!

double story told by two different voices with a twist at the end. great

Great Performance of a Mediocre Novel

The constantly pressing feeling you get us that the author is trying very hard to talk casually about the catastrophe in order to hit your emotions with the smallest details and not to sound kitsch that he ends up being pathetically kitsch you roll your eyes out of your head.

The details he chose to add to the imaginative history are very questionable as well. He might have been trying to get you to sympathize with the ordinarily flawed, or to not sympathize with them but still feel their tragedy in the sense that even those didn't deserve that, but he accomplishes neither very successfully.

Astounding reading

An amazing book by a great American talent from the onset of his career. I think the reader brought so much to the story that I wouldn’t have experienced with the voice in my own head as a reader. In recommending this book to another I would urge them to take the audio path due to the excellence found here.