If you enjoy fictional stories that jump back and forth in time, weaving in true elements from world history with the skilfully imagined characters of an author’s mind, then you most certainly will not want to miss Jai Chakrabarti’s debut novel. Set in early-1940s Warsaw, as well as early-1970s New York City and eastern India, A Play for the End of the World tells the story of the remarkably resilient Jaryk Smith.
Jaryk spent years as the resident of a Warsaw orphanage run by prominent educator, doctor, and author Janusz Korczak. As a young boy, just a few weeks before the Nazis forced all residents of the orphanage away to Treblinka extermination camp, Jaryk acted in a play produced by Korczak. A play not coincidentally about a young boy facing an inevitable death. Korczak staged this play as a way to help prepare the children for the horrors of what was to come, while also shouting out defiantly to the world one last time. It was a “play for the end of the world,” if you will. (You may be wondering which parts of this story are based in history. Although the character of Jaryk was invented by Chakrabarti for this novel, Janusz Korczak did in fact run an orphanage in the Warsaw Ghetto and truly did stage a production of this play with the children!)
Thirty years later, Jaryk lives in New York City, daily battling his guilt for surviving a horror that so many others did not. Jumping back and forth from the present to the past, Chakrabarti tells an incredibly moving tale as Jaryk’s budding relationship with a young woman is interrupted by an unexpected calling, a journey to India to retrieve the ashes of his oldest friend. Amidst political upheaval, Jaryk finds himself compelled to extend his stay in order to lead a performance of the very same play he starred in as a child; but this time, with the hope he could do what was impossible so many years ago: protect those in need from persecution.
A Play for the End of the World is a novel in which many stories are intertwined: those of love and loss, hope and guilt, growth and sacrifice. Perhaps it is most accurately described as an achingly human novel. Readers will feel deeply for Jaryk through his struggle to find happiness in the wake of grief and guilt; will wish for him a way to reconcile the past with the present. Just as Jaryk reflects back while trying to move forward, Chakrabarti explores what it means to survive and contemplates how the past has an uncanny way of echoing into the future. He also centres how powerfully art resonates, how it influences and encourages life even in the most difficult of times … perhaps most importantly during these times.
Chakrabarti has crafted a brilliantly moving debut, a quiet yet insistent imagining that draws on real life to examine issues which are relevant across the globe. A Play for the End of the World is one of those beautifully deceptive pieces of writing that is easy to glide through, but which carries such weight it leaves the mind turning long after the book is finished.
A Play for the End of the World is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore. Many thanks to A.A. Knopf for providing me with an advance copy for review. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are entirely my own.
Will you be picking up A Play for the End of the World? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis | Goodreads
A dazzling debut novel–set in early 1970’s New York and rural India–the story of a turbulent, unlikely romance, a harrowing account of the lasting horrors of the Second World War, and a searing examination of one man’s search for forgiveness and acceptance.
New York City, 1972. Jaryk Smith, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, and Lucy Gardner, a southerner, newly arrived in the city, are in the first bloom of love when they receive word that Jaryk’s oldest friend has died under mysterious circumstances in a rural village in eastern India.
Travelling there alone to collect his friend’s ashes, Jaryk soon finds himself enmeshed in the chaos of local politics and efforts to stage a play in protest against the government–the same play that he performed as a child in Warsaw as an act of resistance against the Nazis. Torn between the survivor’s guilt he has carried for decades and his feelings for Lucy (who, unbeknownst to him, is pregnant with his child), Jaryk must decide how to honor both the past and the present, and how to accept a happiness he is not sure he deserves.
An unforgettable love story, a provocative exploration of the role of art in times of political upheaval, and a deeply moving reminder of the power of the past to shape the present, A Play for the End of the World is a remarkable debut from an exciting new voice in fiction.
Just ordered a copy! So happy to see new authors writing about my hero Janusz Korczak and spreading the word of his good work. Look forward to reading this!