Everything is Illuminated

by Jonathan Safran Foer

The prehistoric ant in Yankel’s ring, which had lain motionless in the honey-colored amber since long before Noah hammered the first plank, hid its head between its many legs, in shame.

As the waves of her tidal contractions began to break over her head, Trachim turned to his wife, perhaps put his callused hand on her soft face, perhaps took his eyes off the riddled road, and perhaps inadvertently steered into the river. Perhaps the wagon flipped, the bodies plunged under its weight, and perhaps, sometime between her mother’s last breath and her father’s final