a beautiful story that i wish i felt more immersed in. the idea behind the story is so compelling and so interesting, but i just did not feel strongly enough by any of the characters for it to really hold my attention. i definitely ended up skimming around a lot but luckily chakrabarti’s writing is so elegant and pretty that i still read enough.

This book is about love, about the human will to survive, and the need to both hope and risk.

I thought the story was poignant, bittersweet and affecting. Smart plotting throughout propelled the story forward and added dimension.

A beautiful novel that transcends humanity and goes in depth about war, trauma, and grief in India. I appreciate that NetGalley provided me a digital copy of this book and look forward to seeing how their craft evolves in their future works.

I need this author to write something else immediately. He is so gifted. This story was filled with characters that I loved. The story was beautiful and the writing was exquisite.

A different sort of WWII novel. More about unspoken restraint and the post-war trauma that affects relationships (family, romantic, friendships-all are covered).

The writing is sparsely poetic and cinematic, keeping the reader at a distance while still supporting deep understanding of the characters.

The plot is hard to put into words, but what I will say is that if you love both literary and historical fiction and want a WWII story that hasn’t been written a million times-this is your novel.

I thought I was done with wwii historical fiction until I found this book. I’ve never read ANYTHING like it. The jumps in time worked, I could not have cared for the characters more, and trauma did not feel gratuitous for a moment. This is an incredibly beautiful story that I need way more people to be talking about!

I really enjoyed this. The 1970s NYC and India settings attracted me, but WWII plays a large part here as well. There are a million and one WWII books out there, but not many (that I've read anyway) focusing on the effects of the war on people. That was really interesting to me.

Jaryk was a child in Poland during the war, but now lives in NYC as an adult. He meets Lucy and they fall in love, but Jaryk's traumatic childhood and survivor guilt seem to be holding him back from letting himself live fully.

Meanwhile, when Jaryk's dear friend Misha dies in India, Jaryk feels compelled to travel there and finish where Misha left off directing a play by Tagore, one that Jaryk performed as a child in a Warsaw Ghetto which also has political meaning for the locals in India. So, yes, there's a lot going on here and a very unique premise, but it all comes together beautifully. And I couldn't help but root for Jaryk and Lucy the whole time.

I’ve always loved stories that remind us of the way that art can change lives, especially things like the tales of prisoners banding together to create music, art, etc. I was pleased to receive a copy of A Play for The End of The World by Jai Chakrabarti from Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group and NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

One thing that appealed to me about this was the setting in rural India in the 1970s. I was deeply affected by Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland and astonished by my realization of the depth of my ignorance about Indian history and political movements, and this story seemed like it might also be a good opportunity for learning.

Jaryk Smith, a guilt-ridden survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, learns that his oldest friend has died in rural India in 1972. Jaryk travels to India to gather his friend’s ashes, and becomes enmeshed in local politics, planning to protest against the local government by recreating the play he participated in as a protest against the Nazis in Warsaw. The story delves deeply into Jaryk’s turmoil as he wrestles with his survivor’s guilt and explores his new feelings of love for Lucy Garnder back in New York (who is carrying his child — surprise!)

It is beautifully written, full of lessons about love, acceptance, guilt, forgiveness, etc. It would probably be five stars if this were a normal time. And it’s unfair for me to judge a book when I KNOW my views are seriously diminished by the mounting despair I feel watching attempts to destroy democracy…so I am sure I will reread this and perhaps change my view. I don’t feel it is fair to give it 5 stars when I am all over the place about everything…so it’s a four from me.

I can not believe this book is not more popular. This might be the best historical fiction I’ve read this year, and I don’t say that lightly because y’all know I have a high high bar for holocaust based historical fiction.

First off, the overall message that there is nothing more important than the small rebellions that keep your spirit alive is gorgeous. The parallels that the author draws between Jaryk’s time performing the play in the first time in the Warsaw ghetto versus a few decades later in a rural village in India is really powerful.

Every character in this novel is just so impactful. My favorite thing was definitely that they’re all so unabashedly flawed people, there is no illusion about any of them. That being said, Jaryk owns my heart and if Lucy didn’t want him I’d for sure take him off her hands.

This whole story is a gorgeous take on art, rebellion, and standing up in the face of hopelessness. The story made me cry many times and I encourage all of you to go out and cry to this one too.

An interesting fusion of political intolerance across two continents and multiple decades, connected by a teasing romance. This novel dodges the obvious, to lend poignancy and acceptably unresolved elements to its narrative. Long and at times a little too obviously structured, nonetheless touching.

In Jai Chakrabarti’s debut novel, A Play for the End of the World, a play by Bengali writer Rabindranath Tagore is a magical and malleable symbol, used to help children accept a dark reality and as a tool for resistance.

When Holocaust survivor Jaryk Smith was a child living in a orphanage in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Nazi occupation of Poland, The Post Office represented the possibility of hope. In the children’s production of the play, Jaryk played Amal, a little boy with an incurable disease who’s confined indoors but makes the most of what he’s got: a window. Amal makes friends at a distance and gleans vicarious joy from watching others play.

Through the play, Jaryk and his fellow orphans experienced a kind of liberation by imagination. But while the other children’s relief was temporary, Jaryk had the life-altering fortune and burden of becoming the orphanage’s lone survivor. Unlike his fellow orphans, unlike almost everyone else he had known in his short life, Jaryk got a chance at a long life.

A Play for the End of the World primarily focuses on what happens next, how new life takes root after extreme ruin.

Chakrabarti’s novel is realistic and tentative and breathtakingly poignant, with a payoff that’s more than worth the trip if you have the heart to withstand it.

See full review at BookPage.com

This novel has a lot of grace and heart. It makes us question how much art and politics are inextricably linked. And how the past lives on into the present.

I interviewed the author for https://desibooks.co.

A Play and a Holocaust Survivor

As a child in a Warsaw orphanage, Jarvyk Smith was involved in the production of a play that was a protest against the approaching Nazis. He and his friend Misha managed to escape the train taking them to the camps. Now Misha has perished in a remote village in India where he was involved in producing the same play.

Although his life in New York is far from the horrors of WWII, Jarvyk can’t rise above his survivor’s guilt. Even his love affair with Lucy Gardener, a transplanted Southerner with whom he has started a romantic relationship, can’t keep him from going to India to recover Misha’s remains. However, once there he becomes enmeshed in taking Misha’s place in the play being produced in the troubled village.

When it appears he is gone for a long time, Lucy follows him with the purpose of bringing him back.

This is a lyrically written book with a difficult subject. Jarvyk is torn by guilt that he was one of the only ones who escaped the Nazis. This guilt keeps him from wholeheartedly embracing life even his love affair with Lucy.

The book is an interesting exploration of the relationship between art, politics and community. It’s played out against Jarvek’s fears from the past and of moving on to the future. Although I found the ending somewhat equivocal, it’s a good look at the fallout for survivors of WWII.

I received this book from Knopf for this review.

I really enjoyed this book. It has a bit of a slow start but is beautifully written to bounce between different times and places. The differing narrator points of view keep the story fresh. Some might suspect from the title that it is a sad book and while there are parts where this is true, the book itself is not sad. The characters are well built and it is an incredibly immersive read.

A Play for the End of the World is a beautiful, surprising novel filled with both harsh reality and unexpected moments of hope. As another reviewer noted, it shouldn’t work, but it does. I especially appreciated the writing - it sweeps you up into the story and even though I was never entirely sure where the author was taking me, it was good to be on the ride. This is the perfect Autumn read, as much of the tone of the book echoed that season - there is death, but the hope of new life, and flashes of bright, stunning color. A book to savor and enjoy.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing a copy of this book.

A story about a play that brings a Holocaust survivor from Warsaw full circle to India by way of New York City shouldn't work - but it does, in Jai Chakrabarti's A Play for the End of the World. For so long, historical fiction that addresses World War II has been focused on the war itself, often with plucky heroines. The world definitely needs more heroines, but it also needs murky reality, which is precisely what Chakrabarti gives us with his protagonist, Jaryk. As a young boy Jaryk was an orphan living under the guidance of Pan Doktor, who has the children in his care perform a play called The Post Office, as the Germans approach and the gas chambers await. But Jaryk is able to survive by escaping the train and foraging, and surviving, based on skills his mentor Misha taught him. He and Misha are the only ones that survive from the home, and after Misha dies bringing the play back to life in a part of India that is alive with political strife, Jaryk feels he has no choice but to follow in Misha's footsteps to India. And while he only intends to bring back his friend's remains, he finds himself drawn to the village community that is trying to survive while their country tries to take everything from them. The only problem for Jaryk is that Lucy waits back home, and she's given him a whole new perspective on life as well. The challenge Jaryk faces is survivor's guilt, can he really be happy with Lucy and the family they could have together when he constantly lives with the idea that he lived when everyone else he considered family, perished? In many ways this mental battle is WAY harder to address in a novel than the physical survival of the war, and this story does a brilliant job of approaching it. The story is messy, Jaryk is conflicted, Lucy is frustrated and the ending may be more ambiguous than the reader wants (raises hand). But it's hard to live with that, and it's hard to put yourself in the shoes of someone who has survived as much as Jaryk has. I do feel that the story gets a little bogged down as Jaryk spends time in India trying to figure who, what and where he wants to be, but all in all this is a fantastic book with beautiful storytelling.

Jai Chakrabarti’s A Play for the End of the World, due for release on September 7, begins in a Warsaw orphanage in August 1942, four days before the staff and children are evacuated to Treblinka, where all but two of them will perish. The directors of the orphanage, who can already anticipate what will happen, try to prepare the children by staging a production of Rabindranath Tagore’s The Post Office, a play about death and how to prepare for it.

Thirty years later, those two survivors are invited to restage the play in Bengal, and through the prism of their journey—in particular, Jaryk’s, the younger former orphan who follows to reclaim his friend’s ashes—we see not just the effects of what they went through in 1942 but all the years between. In this way, the book is less about the war than about the postwar experience of those who lived through it. If all goes well, I’ll be hosting a written Q&A on my blog (linked below) with Jai Chakrabarti in mid-September.

A novel set in New York and India in the 1970’s. The book involves an unlikely love story and becoming enmeshed in a political upheaval in Calcutta. With the back story about survivors guilt, this is a very moving and intense book.