In Chakrabarti\u2019s A Play for the End of the World<\/em>, the quest is that of child survivor Jaryk Smith, who travels from New York to India in 1972 to collect the ashes of his best friend and fellow Holocaust survivor, Misha, who died of a heart attack. Misha had ventured to India to help a village mount a production of Rabindranath Tagore\u2019s Dak Ghar<\/em> (translated as \u201cThe Post Office\u201d), which Jaryk and Misha had performed when they were under the care of Janusz Korczak (aka Pan Doktor by the children) in Warsaw in 1942.<\/p>\n The Indian villagers are also being prepared for what is to come \u2013 they are under threat of expulsion, or worse, from the government; already, protesters have been imprisoned, even killed. The Indian professor promoting the play wants to bring international attention to their plight.<\/p>\n Tangled up in all this is Lucy, who Jaryk loves but abandons in New York when he hears about Misha\u2019s death. One of the many choices Jaryk faces is whether he can accept the happiness that Lucy and life in general can offer him.<\/p>\n Happiness is a rare and difficult-to-achieve state in Carter\u2019s novel, as well. The Leonora of the book\u2019s title is artist Leonora Carrington, who was born in England in 1917 and died in Mexico in 2011. An unofficial part of the Surrealist movement (because women weren\u2019t allowed), Carrington was an acclaimed painter and writer. Of her relationships, the most famed would be with fellow Surrealist Max Ernst, who was twice her age at their time of meeting.<\/p>\n \u201cI was drawn to Leonora Carrington before I even knew who she was,\u201d writes Carter in the author\u2019s note. \u201cLong intrigued by the Surrealist artists, by their playful take on creativity and their celebration of surprise and strangeness, I had set out, in 2013, to write a fictional story placed among them, set between the wars and with a young woman at its centre.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"image](\"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/jan-28-books.28.historical-novels-Chakrabarti-A-Play-for-the-End-of-the-World-cover.jpeg\")
<\/a>While Jaryk, Misha and all the other characters are fictional, Korczak and Dak Ghar<\/em> were very real. \u201cThe play is about a dying child living through his imagination while quarantined,\u201d writes Chakrabarti in the author\u2019s note. \u201cPan Doktor chose to stage the play to help his orphans reimagine ghetto life and to prepare them for what was to come.\u201d<\/p>\n