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Jonathan Safran Foer emerged as one of the most original writers of his
generation with his best-selling debut novel, Everything Is Illuminated.
Now, with humor, tenderness, and awe, he confronts the traumas of our
recent history. What he discovers is solace in that most human quality,
imagination.
Meet Oskar Schell, an inventor, Francophile,
tambourine player, Shakespearean actor, jeweler, pacifist, correspondent
with Stephen Hawking and Ringo Starr. He is nine years old. And he is on
an urgent, secret search through the five boroughs of New York. His
mission is to find the lock that fits a mysterious key belonging to his
father, who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11.
An inspired
innocent, Oskar is alternately endearing, exasperating, and hilarious as
he careens from Central Park to Coney Island to Harlem on his search.
Along the way he is always dreaming up inventions to keep those he loves
safe from harm. What about a birdseed shirt to let you fly away? What if
you could actually hear everyone's heartbeat? His goal is hopeful, but the
past speaks a loud warning in stories of those who've lost loved ones
before. As Oskar roams New York, he encounters a motley assortment of
humanity who are all survivors in their own way. He befriends a
103-year-old war reporter, a tour guide who never leaves the Empire State
Building, and lovers enraptured or scorned.
Ultimately, Oskar ends
his journey where it began, at his father's grave. But now he is
accompanied by the silent stranger who has been renting the spare room of
his grandmother's apartment. They are there to dig up his father's empty
coffin.
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