Everything is illuminated (Penguin Books)

Everything Is Illuminated is Jonathan Safran Foer's bestselling novel of a search for truth, published as a Penguin Essential for the first time.The inspiration for the Liev Schreiber film, starring Elijah WoodA young man arrives in the Ukraine, clutching in his hand a tattered photograph.

He is searching for the woman who fifty years ago saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Unfortunately, he is aided in his quest by Alex, a translator with an uncanny ability to mangle English into bizarre new forms; a "blind" old man haunted by memories of the war; and an undersexed guide dog named Sammy Davis Jr, Jr.

What they are looking for seems elusive -- a truth hidden behind veils of time, language and the horrors of war.What they find turns all their worlds upside down...