How is Everything?

I've already said this by word of mouth and to confirm its validity, here it is again, written down: this is for the first time that I read a book -based on which a film had been made- after having seen the film.
Everything is Illuminated the film appeared as humourously juvenile, culturally ambivalent and somehow innocent because of the imagery; it's only much later, during the reading of the book, that I've learnt that Gogol Bordello's Eugene Hutz was the one playing the role of Alex, which only added some more colour to the entire enterprise.

Everything is Illuminated the book [excerpts from which you can see here] provided for a much more comprehensive experience; to start with, that's formally because it works with two narrators rather than one: Jonathan [the author] and Alex [the Ukrainian 'translator' & later almost-friend(?)]:

Jonathan Safran Foer, designated by Alex as "the hero of this story" is travelling to Ukraine to look for Augustine, the woman who supposedly saved his grandfather during the second world war. All Jonathan has to help him in his search is a photograph of Augustine. Jonathan does not know Ukrainian, and hires the services of Alex as translator. Alex's skills in this direction are dubious, but he makes up in enthusiasm what he lacks in competence. Accompanying the two in their search is Alex's grandfather, and their bitch, Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior.

This stylistic manner is further emphasized in that

[t]he spectrum between the two voices that construct the novel highlights the remarkable versatility of the English language, whose contours become unpredictable in Alex's use of it. [...] As raconteur, Alex's role is to tell the story of the search, and in the process, the story of his grandfather as well.

On the other hand,

Jonathan .. (re)constructs the (his)story of Trachimbrod. [...] So if Alex's language is the domain of the novel's stylistic creative endeavours, in Jonathan's story, reality and reliability become areas in which to assert the power of the imagination. There is also the fact that Alex occasionally embellishes facts or even lies while translating to Jonathan. All these collude to create a unique world where either language or/and the story resist an unambiguous interpretation.
Everything is Illuminated comes to be assembled together not only by the two voices relating events independently, but also dialoguing with each other. [...]
Foer's experimentation with Alex's style includes malapropisms like "rotated" for "turned", "luxuriated" for "enjoyed", "premium" for "important", or "appeased" for "pleased", used interchangeably in the way of an English language learner whose attention to vocabulary is ignorant of the context in which words make meaning. In general, Foer achieves this effect by having Alex use superlative adjectives and adverbs ("I did not yearn to mention this, but I will" says Alex in a letter to Jonathan on p.52, and "Enough of my miniature talking," he remarks on p.53) where moderate words would do.

[as written here]

Undoubtedly, the power of the writing style together with the magic of the imagined stories work together for the overall captivation of the reader, as the book seems to be interacting and illuminating based on a personalised timeline which leaves one guessing what would be next.
Obviously these were enticing enough to lead to many appreciative critiques, to a film and a book's website, as well as winning the author the Guardian First Book Award of that year.
So what is left not illuminated you ask; the question of a different topic as dealt with by the same author.

Here's the film's trailer, in case you were curious: