Not a crime novel or fantasy even if extraneous factors like a terrible earthquake that devastates the state of Israel and causes its enemies to ally to force its final destruction, but a terribly idiosyncratic first novel in 10 years from the author of Everything is Illuminated which I was a great admirer of. The aforesaid cataclysm serves as a background for the slow, finely-etched falling apart at the seams of a Jewish family in Brooklyn. At times truly hilarious and with offspring even more literate and annoying than those in the Outnumbered TV sitcom, this is also a serious examination of modern angst and, at the same time, a devastating X-ray of the intellectual male of the species (as closely modelled on the author himself who went through a divorce with wife and writer Nicole Kraus during the gestation of the novel). It's a book that people will love and hate, a long book, a major book, a curious book. But who said novels were mere entertainment (although at times I did laugh out very loud...)? ~ Maxim Jakubowski
God asked Abraham to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac, and Abraham replied obediently, 'Here I am'. This is the story of a fracturing family in a moment of crisis. Over the course of three weeks in present-day Washington DC, three sons watch their parents' marriage falter and their family home fall apart. Meanwhile, a larger catastrophe is engulfing another part of the world: a massive earthquake devastates the Middle East, sparking a pan-Arab invasion of Israel. With global upheaval in the background and domestic collapse in the foreground, Jonathan Safran Foer asks us - what is the true meaning of home? Can one man ever reconcile the conflicting duties of his many roles - husband, father, son? And how much of life can a person bear?
'A brilliantly acrobatic imagination' Sunday Times
'Foer writes like a dream... big-hearted, courageous and jaw-droppingly clever' -- Deborah Moggach
Author
About Jonathan Safran Foer
Jonathan Safran Foer was born in 1977 in Washington, D.C. He is the author of Everything Is Illuminated, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and Eating Animals. Everything Is Illuminated won several literary prizes, including the National Jewish Book Award and the Guardian First Book Award. His stories have been published in The Paris Review, Conjunctions and the New Yorker. Foer teaches Creative Writing at New York University.
