Everything is Illuminated

Jonathan safran Foer's first novel is by turns hilarious and heartbreaking. It's a multilayerd book which is beautifuly written. One of my favourite characters is the Grandfather's "maloderous seeing eye bith" Sammy Davis Junior Junior - who is also blind. The cover is excellent and apparently the author had a lot to do with the design. Wierdly though, the French cover for the same book is rubbish. Foer obviously didn't have anything to do with that one.











Chinese ink, chalk marker and collage on paper. 

There were many boxes that were overflowing with items. These had writing on their sides. A white cloth was overwhelming from the box marked WEDDINGS AND OTHER CELEBRATIONS. The box marked PRIVATE: JOURNALS/DIARIES/SKETCHBOOKS/UNDERWEAR was so overfilled that it appeared prepared to rupture. There was another box, marked SILVER/PERFUME/PINWHEELS, and one marked WATCHES/WINTER, and one marked HYGIENE/SPOOLS/CANDLES, and one marked FIGURES/SPECTACLES. If I had been a smart person, I would have recorded all of the names on a piece of paper, as the hero did in his diary, but I was not a smart person, and have since forgotten many of them. Some of the names I could not reason, like the box marked DARKNESS, or the one with DEATH OF THE FIRSTBORN written in pencil on its front. I noticed that there was one box on top of one of these skyscrapers of boxes that was marked DUST.

Jonathan Safran Foer