#12 in Contemporary fiction
Everything Is Illuminated
- 288
- Pages
- about 5 h
- Reading time
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Our view
“Everything Is Illuminated” starts as a comedy of mangled English and ends as a quiet book of mourning. Jonathan Safran Foer’s debut follows a journey into a family’s wartime past, and some readers single out the humour of the first half, which thins as the story darkens. Others find the structure scattered or the sexual content more than they wanted. It suits those who can take laughter and grief in one book.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Everything Is Illuminated is the first novel by the American writer Jonathan Safran Foer, published in 2002. It was adapted into a film of the same name starring Elijah Wood and Eugene Hütz in 2005.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.7 across 303 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 67% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Contemporary fiction average of 7.7. That is how 7.7 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.6 | 21 | 7% |
| Hardcover | 7.7 | 282 | 93% |
Frequently asked
How long is Everything Is Illuminated?
It has 288 pages — shorter than 80% of the ranked books in Contemporary fiction.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Contemporary fiction — with scores between 7.2 and 8.2, closest to this book.
