Free Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer

is here is only what is not here. I kiss my pillow before I go to sleep and imagine it’s you. It sounds like something you might do, I know. That’s probably why I do it.
    It almost worked. He had repeated the details so many times that it was nearly impossible to distinguish them from the facts. But the real note kept returning to him, and that, he was sure, was what kept him from that most simple and impossible thing: happiness. I had to do it for myself. Brod discovered it one day when she was only a few years old. It had found its way into her right pocket, as if the note had a mind of its own, as if those seven scribbled words were capable of wanting to inflict reality. I had to do it for myself. She either sensed the immense importance of it or deemed it entirely unimportant, because she never mentioned it to Yankel, but put it on his bedside table, where he would find it that night after rereading another letter that was not from her mother, not from his wife. I had to do it for myself.
    I am not sad.

Another Lottery, 1791
    The Well-Regarded Rabbi paid half a baker’s dozen of eggs and a handful of blueberries for the following announcement to be printed in Shimon T’s weekly newsletter: that an irascible magistrate in Lvov had demanded a name for the nameless shtetl, that the name would be used for new maps and census records, that it should not offend the refined sensibilities of either the Ukrainian or the Polish gentry, or be too hard to pronounce, and that it must be decided upon by week’s end.
    A VOTE! the Well-Regarded Rabbi proclaimed. WE SHALL TAKE IT TO A VOTE. For as the Venerable Rabbi once enlightened, AND IF WE BELIEVE THAT EVERY SANE, STRICTLY MORAL, ABOVE-AVERAGE, PROPERTY-HOLDING, OBSERVANT ADULT JEWISH MALE IS BORN WITH A VOICE THAT MUST BE HEARD, SHALL WE NOT HEAR THEM ALL?
    The next morning a polling box was placed outside the Upright Synagogue, and the qualifying citizens queued up along the Jewish/Human fault line. Bitzl Bitzl R voted for “Gefilteville”; the deceased philosopher Pinchas T for “Time Capsule of Dust and String.” The Well-Regarded Rabbi cast his ballot for “SHTETL OF THE PIOUS UPRIGHTERS AND THE UNMENTIONABLE SLOUCHERS WITH WHOM NO RESPECTABLE JEW SHOULD HAVE ANYTHING TO DO UNLESS THE HOT SPOT IS HIS IDEA OF A VACATION.”
    The mad squire Sofiowka N, having so much time and so little to do, took it upon himself to guard the box all afternoon and then deliver it to the magistrate’s office in Lvov that evening. By morning it was official: resting twenty-three kilometers southeast of Lvov, four north of Kolki, and straddling the Polish-Ukrainian border like a twig alighted on a fence was the shtetl of Sofiowka. The new name was, much to the dismay of those who had to bear it, official and irrevocable. It would be with the shtetl until its death.
    Of course, no one in Sofiowka called it Sofiowka. Until it had such a disagreeable official name, no one felt the need to call it anything. But now that there was an offense — that the shtetl should be that shithead’s namesake — the citizens had a name not to go by. Some even called the shtetl Not-Sofiowka, and would continue to even after a new name was chosen.
    The Well-Regarded Rabbi called for another vote. THE OFFICIAL NAME CANNOT BE CHANGED, he said, BUT WE MUST HAVE A REASONABLE NAME FOR OUR OWN PURPOSES. While no one was quite sure what was meant by purposes — Did we have purposes before?
    What, exactly, is my purpose among our purposes? — the second vote seemed unquestionably necessary. The polling box was placed outside the Upright Synagogue, and it was the Well-Regarded Rabbi’s twins, this time, who guarded it.
    The arthritic locksmith Yitzhak W voted for “Borderland.” The man of law Isaac M for “Shtetlprudence.” Lilla F, descendant of the first Sloucher to drop the book, persuaded the twins to let her sneak in a ballot, on which was written “Pinchas.” (The twins also voted: Hannah for