Proud to partner with the Jewish Chronicle Everything is Illuminated
Jonathan Safran Foer
In this session, Peter Florence discussed literature and celebrity with America’s newest literary wunderkind. Jonathan Safran Foer’s debut novel, Everything is Illuminated, tells of a journey to Eastern Europe made by a college student, also named Jonathan Safran Foer. Armed with only a yellowing photograph, he sets out to find the woman who might or might not be a link to the grandfather he never knew. Blending high comedy and deep tragedy, the search moves back in time, the fantastical story moves forward, and they meet in a heart-stopping scene of immense power. The book was the winner of this year’s Guardian First Book Award.
Jonathan Safran Foer is the prize-winning author of Everything is Illuminated – published in 2002 – Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Eating Animals. He is currently a professor in the Graduate Creative Writing Programme at New York University.
Peter FlorencePeter Florence is co-founder and director of Hay Festival, which has been coined “the Woodstock of the mind” by Bill Clinton. He and his team now direct cultural festivals worldwide.
