Additional info
- Author
- Jonathan Safran Foer
- Title
- Everything is Illuminated
- Translator
- Publisher
- Penguin, 2003
- Info
- pp. 288, £8.99
A book full of (broken) promises
It is not always easy to disentangle the two plots making up the story of this novel, which deals with the quest for the past and origins. The ironic mood and the language, which is occasionally surreal (a great part of the text is imagined as written in the hilarious English of a Ukrainian student), are well rendered in the Italian translation, and contrast with the harsh and grievous topics of the final part, which is the key to the novel. But a few obscure points remain, which are not clarified by the author and are left to the reader’s interpretation.
An interesting narrative experiment, certainly not lacking in originality.
Translation by Stefano Bragato (edited by Roma O’Flaherty)
