Exactly how steamy is this story?
NC-17
If Everything is Illuminated were made into a movie exactly as it appears in the book, it would have to be called Everything is Pixelated or be relegated to the Adults-Only section of Netflix.(Netflix Genre: Sexually Explicit Movies about the Holocaust featuring Flatulent Dogs Starring Elijah Wood.)
Jonathan's grandfather is a busy, busy man. He has sex with 132 women, and we get to hear details of quite a few of them. The widows. The virgins. The Gypsy girl under the tree. The orgasm as bombs fall nearby. Lots and lots of details about the author's grandfather having sex. It's like Girls meets Golden Girls.
On top (bottom, sideways, upside down…) of that we have Alex bragging about his giant penis and sexual prowess, Brod (Jonathan's great-great-great-great-great-grandmother) having sex through a hole in the wall, and Jonathan staring down a waitress's blouse—which is one of the most chaste sexual scenes in the book.