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.

Plot Summary

Everything is Illuminated is told through multiple narratives. One thread, written by a character named Jonathan Safran Foer, is a fictional history of Trachimbrod, a village that was destroyed by the Nazis in 1942. Another story, by a character named Alex, retells his, Jonathan’s, and his grandfather’s present-day quest to find Trachimbrod and a woman named Augustine. Interspersed with these stories are letters from Alex to Jonathan, written after their trip together.

As the novel opens, Alex and his Grandfather work for Alex’s father’s tourism company. They are on their way to pick up Jonathan Safran Foer, a Jewish American who has come to Ukraine to explore his family’s history. Alex will serve as his translator and Grandfather as the driver. In addition, they bring Grandfather’s dog, Sammy Davis Jr. Jr., on the trip.

The novel switches to Jonathan’s narration of Trachimbrod’s history. Two girls from the shtetl see household items floating in the river Brod while playing. A man named Trachim flipped his wagon into the river and the flotsam are his possessions. The townsfolk can’t find Trachim, but a newborn girl floats to the river’s surface. The rabbi takes her to the synagogue, and Yankel D wins the lottery to adopt her and names her Brod after the river. Meanwhile, the town must choose an official name for itself, but the landlord, Sofiowka, names it after himself. They hold another lottery to choose an unofficial name. Yankel’s suggestion wins, and they call the town Trachimbrod.

Alex writes a letter to Jonathan after their trip. He now has enough money to buy a ticket to America, which is his dream. He asks for another picture of Augustine, at Grandfather’s request. In response to Jonathan’s suggestions about his story, Alex refuses to change details to make Jonathan look better.

In Alex’s story, Jonathan explains the purpose of his trip: he is trying to find a woman named Augustine, who helped his grandfather, Safran, escape the Nazis. He has a photograph of Safran with Augustine’s family. The photo convinces Grandfather and Alex to help find Trachimbrod, Safran’s hometown. They stop at a hotel for the night and the owners take advantage of Jonathan. Alex and Grandfather do not sleep well.

In Trachimbrod, Yankel is afraid that he will die before Brod is old enough to take care of herself. By the time she is 12, she has received marriage proposals from every man in town. One day, she attends the Trachimday festival and Yankel is dead when she gets home. The man who won the diving contest, the Kolker, is at the window. He will become Jonathan’s great-great-great-great-great grandfather.

Alex tells Jonathan in a letter that he will bring his brother, Igor, with him to America. Again, he refuses to take embarrassing material out of his story and asks Jonathan to write more about his grandmother. He says that Grandfather is crying at night, looking at pictures of Augustine and Jonathan.

Back on the road the next morning, Jonathan, Alex, and Grandfather search for Trachimbrod. They ask for directions but no one has heard of it. Finally, they stop at a run-down house and Alex asks the occupant if she has heard of Trachimbrod. She demurs several times, then admits that she is all that is left of Trachimbrod.

In Jonathan’s Trachimbrod history, it’s 1941 and Safran is about to be married. He stops at a bronze statue of the Kolker, who was injured in a mill accident and survived with a saw blade embedded in his skull. This caused him to explode unpredictably in anger, forcing him and Brod, his wife, to live in separate rooms. His fellow workers put up this statue after his death, and it became a symbol of luck. Safran kneels at the statue, then rises and goes to get married.

Alex writes a letter to Jonathan confessing that he has misrepresented himself and his life. Grandfather asks Jonathan to forgive him for the things he told him about the war. Alex asks Jonathan not to put Grandfather’s story into his book.

Alex, Jonathan, and Grandfather have lunch with the woman in the house. At first, they think she is Augustine, but she tells them she’s not. She does, however, have all the artifacts from Trachimbrod, and tells them that Safran was the first boy she kissed. She finds a photo of herself and Safran together. Grandfather becomes increasingly agitated during the visit. He and the woman speak privately while Alex and Jonathan go outside. The woman agrees to take them to Trachimbrod.

In the Trachimbrod history, Safran goes to his fiancée’s cellar to dress for the wedding. His fiancée’s sister is there, with whom Safran is having an affair. He reflects on his life, wondering if he should be held responsible for his actions.

The woman takes Alex, Jonathan, and Grandfather to Trachimbrod, but there is no town, just an open field with only a small marker to distinguish it. She tells about when the Nazis came to Trachimbrod and gave the men a choice between spitting on the Torah or their families being shot. Her father refused to spit, even when they shot his family, but when his own life was threatened, he spit. Her pregnant sister escaped to the forest. Later, she gathered the inhabitants’ possessions, hiding them in the forest. She returned when the war ended, collected the items, and moved into a nearby house. It becomes clear that the woman is the one who survived the attack. When they return to her house, she gives Jonathan a box of artifacts, and they learn that her name is Lista.

In Jonathan’s history, Sofiowka rapes Brod and tells her that Yankel is not her real father. Brod returns home, sees the Kolker, and asks him to do something for her. The next morning, Sofiowka is found dead, hanging from the bridge.

In a letter, Alex tells Jonathan that Grandfather asked to borrow money to search for Augustine. He says he is going to give it to him, although he knows he will not be able to repay it and he won’t be able to afford moving to America

Alex, Grandfather, and Jonathan return to the hotel. In the box that Lista gave Jonathan, they find a photograph of two men, one of whom looks like Alex, with a woman holding a baby. Grandfather reveals that the man is him, and that he murdered the other man in the photo, his best friend, Herschel.

In Trachimbrod’s history, we return to a time before Safran’s wedding. He is seeing a Romani girl and thinks he might be in love. His parents arrange a marriage for him, and he intends to go along with it. He visits one of the widows he had an affair with, a woman named Lista.

In a letter to Jonathan, Alex loses his temper because of the way Jonathan is writing his story. He also tells Jonathan that he decided not to give Grandfather the money, and reveals that Grandfather died by suicide several days ago.

Grandfather tells his story. He and his wife and child lived in Kolki, near Trachimbrod. His best friend, Herschel, was a Jew. When the Nazis attacked, they forced the men to identify Jews or be shot. When they put the gun to Grandfather’s head, he identified Herschel. He and the other Jews were burned alive in the synagogue. Grandfather decided that he must completely change his life so that his child, Alex’s father, would never find out what he did.

In Trachimbrod, Safran gets married and notices the Romani girl among the servers at the wedding. That night, he has sex with his wife while thinking about the Romani girl. They hear bombs in the distance. Trachimbrod is not immediately attacked, but even with advanced warning, they cannot decide what to do. Safran visits the statue, which tells him of the true, final days of the Kolker’s life with Brod. She would come to his room every night, despite how dangerous it was.

The bombing of Trachimbrod begins on Trachimday 1942. When it stops, the Nazis arrive. They threaten the lives of the men and their families if they do not desecrate the Torah. They then force all of the Jews into the synagogue. A page from The Book of Recurrent Dreams comes loose, telling the story of Zosha, Safran’s wife, being swept away by the river, her child born but strangled on the umbilical cord.

Grandfather writes a letter to Jonathan, to be translated and mailed by Alex. In it, he tells Jonathan that Alex kicked his father out of the house, and Grandfather is proud of him. Grandfather plans to die by suicide in order to free Alex from the burdens of his past.