“In Everything is Illuminated, a young American with the same name as the author travels to the Ukraine, carrying a photograph of the woman believed in the legends of the Safran Foer family to have saved his grandad from the Nazis. This sensitive quest is redirected as farce when Jonathan’s guides in Odessa proved to be an ancient chauffeur, somewhat worryingly accompanied by a guide dog, and the driver’s grandson, Alex, a would-be translator whose ear for American is as reliable as his grandfather’s eye for the road. A Jewish vegetarian, the American struggles in a country filled (as Safran Foer presents it) with meat-eating anti-semites.” This book club met every two weeks.
