If you thought that Foer was a peculiar cultural phenomenon of the immediate post-9/11 era—a writer who satisfied a deep longing for a more innocent time with books that seemed to revel in a childlike wonder—his publisher would beg to differ. He is very much of the here and now, perhaps never more than at this moment.
The novel, his first in more than ten years, is about both the break-up of a marriage and an Arab invasion of Israel. In case the cover’s message didn’t come through, his publisher also released the following statement: “What should a book cover look like for an author as original, as questing, and as full of aliveness as Jonathan Safran Foer?” Not only alive, you see, but full of aliveness.