Book Discussion

Wednesday, July 13, 2022, 1:00PM
The Hartzmark Library
26000 Shaker Boulevard
Beachwood, OH 44122
Wednesday, August 10, 2022, 1:00PM
The Hartzmark Library
26000 Shaker Boulevard
Beachwood, OH 44122

A Play for the End of the World

The book is A Play for the End of the World by Jai Chakrabarti, and discussion will be led by Beth Rosenthal, Mandel JCC associate for the Jewish Book Festival.

A Play for the End of the World won the National Jewish Book Award’s Debut Fiction prize and was a finalist for the Association of Jewish Libraries Fiction Award.

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.

To register, to participate via Zoom, or for more information, contact Jane Rothstein at jrothstein@ttti.org.