Years ago, during a somber visit to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum, author Jai Chakrabarti found the spark of an idea that would become his celebrated 2021 novel about an unlikely romance, A Play for the End of the World.
It was an exhibit on the author, doctor, and teacher Janusz Korczak, who had staged a play by the Bengali Nobel laureate playwright Rabindranath Tagore at the Warsaw orphanage he led during the Nazi occupation in 1942.
“I was really taken because I had grown up with Tagore’s work, being born in Kolkata, India,” Chakrabarti says. “I wanted to understand why Janusz Korczak would choose to stage this particular play and what it meant for him and for his children in that moment of war.”
That’s when Chakrabarti, who lives in New York with his family, began the long process of piecing together the history of that time and what motivated Korczak to mount a production just weeks before he was deported to the Treblinka extermination camp. A Play for the End of the World, which won the National Jewish Book Award and was longlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award, explores the value and the power of art during one of modern history’s darkest periods.
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It was a question Chakrabarti, 42, encountered within himself as he labored over what would become his acclaimed debut novel. “I didn’t know if I should continue to spend as many hours that I was spending working on my writing,” Chakrabarti says.
Chakrabarti emigrated with his family from India to America when he was in the third grade. Writing became a way to process the radical change he experienced. “Writing has been a constant through line in my life since then,” he says.
He plugged away with his research, and became aware of other artists who also continued working during the war. “All of these folks during that time came to art, regardless of the circumstances or maybe more because of it, because art provides a defense,” Chakrabarti says. “It was an essential practice; I needed to continue the project no matter what.”
Chakrabarti published a short story collection A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness earlier this year.
The best book I’ve read in the past year is… Radiant Fugitives by Nawaaz Ahmed.
My three favorite plays are… I would have to include [Russian playwright Anton] Chekhov in this list because I learned a lot about plot structure from reading Chekhov, so perhaps Three Sisters, Noel Coward’s Plaza Suite because that was the first play I acted in, and more recently Sweat by Lynn Notage.
If I could have a drink with anyone, anywhere, it would be… Virginia Woolfe and it would be a dusty bar in London; I’d try to learn as much about her craft magic as I could.
One trip I’ve taken in the past that I’d like to take again is… hiking the base hills of the Himalayas: at times, I felt as if I had been given access to another planet with a raw, harsh beauty that left an enduring impression on me.
My favorite ways to relax are… I read, do yoga, and walk in the woods.
An artist whose work I most admire is… Federico Garcia Lorca, who’s best known perhaps as a poet, found solace and beauty in his drawings, and I’ve always admired the ability of artists like Lorca to inhabit multiple mediums.
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If I were to buy a piece of art, it would be… Salvador Dali’s “Mad Tea Party” for extending my imagination into unfamiliar places.
A passion of mine few people know about is… As a teenager and into my early twenties, I studied Indian classical vocal music; these days, I’m a listener, not a practitioner, but I still love the quality of improvisations in the “khyaal” form.
The one thing that gets me up in the morning is… the possibility of discovering something new, risky, and beautiful on the page.
A childhood memory that I treasure is… being told stories of adventure by my great uncle in my grandparents’ old colonial house in Kolkata, India.
The person who has inspired me to do what I do is… my mother.
The restaurant in my hometown that I love taking visitors to is… I love the experience of Indian street food, and for those so inclined, I would take them to my local kati roll stand in Kolkata (kati rolls are sauteed veggies wrapped in egg-basted parathas).
A perfect meal at home for me is… grilled salmon, greens, a glass of merlot.
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