The historical performance of a Tagore play by a group of children in a 1942 Warsaw Ghetto orphanage inspired this arresting debut from Chakrabarti. In a prologue, nine-year-old Jaryk prepares to perform Tagore's Dak Ghar, which is about a terminally ill boy and was chosen by the orphanage's teacher as a way to prepare for the horrors to come. Chakrabarti then jumps to 1972, when Jaryk flies from his home in New York City to Calcutta to retrieve the remains of his best friend Misha, his mentor at the orphanage, from a small village. Misha, who died of a heart attack, was there to stage a 30th-anniversary production of Dak Ghar, which also resonates with those impacted by the Bangladeshi refugee crisis. Details of the children's doomed deportation from the orphanage to Treblinka emerge, along with the story of how Jaryk had escaped from the S.S. and survived in the woods with skills Misha had taught him. In India, Jaryk gets swept up in the production Misha left behind, oblivious of the turbulent local politics that drove the play's production. Chakrabarti moves the reader seamlessly through the nonlinear narrative and brilliantly conveys Jaryk's survivor's guilt from WWII, which is doubled by the loss of Misha. This trenchant story will move readers. Agent: Julie Stevenson, Massie & McQuilkin Literary Agents. (Sept.)An earlier version of this review incorrectly summarized Dak Ghar and mischaracterized elements of the plot involving one of the characters.

Using a 1942 performance of Rabindranath Tagore's play The Post Office by children in a Warsaw orphanage on the precipice of being transported to a Nazi death camp as a jumping off point, Chakrabarti's absorbing debut is an ode to art, friendship, and love. Jaryk and Misha, the only two survivors from the orphanage, found each other after the war. Seen as an act of resistance, the play is now being performed decades later in a small village in India volatile with political unrest. Misha is in India at the request of the professor in charge of the production. When Jaryk receives word that Misha has died and he must come collect his remains, he has no choice but to go even though it means leaving behind his love Lucy, who, unbeknownst to him, is pregnant. Chakrabarti's characters are sharply drawn and alluring, and Jaryk's survivor's guilt is palpable. At its heart this is a love story, and literary readers not used to cheering for a happy ending may find themselves doing just that.

A play by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore serves as a source of hope for Jewish orphans in wartime Warsaw and, decades later, for Communist revolutionaries in the Indian state of West Bengal. Jaryk Smith is just 9 in 1942 and living in the (real-life) Warsaw ghetto orphanage run by doctor and author Janusz Korczak when he plays the role of Amal--a sickly Indian child who dreams of worlds beyond his home--in the Tagore play Dak Ghar. Days later, the Nazis send all the area's Jews to the Treblinka death camp; Jaryk is the only one of Korczak's 200 charges to escape the gas chambers. In the displaced persons camp where he winds up after the war, he's reunited with Misha Waszynski, who had worked at the orphanage. Nearly three decades on, having immigrated to New York, Jaryk and Misha have become lifelong friends with a shared history. Despite being wracked by survivor's guilt, Jaryk is beginning to explore a relationship with Lucy Gardner, a woman who works in the city's employment agency. Their relationship is disrupted when Jaryk learns of Misha's death thousands of miles away, in the Indian state of West Bengal, where he had traveled to help produce the very same Tagore play. Unsettled by his friend's demise, Jaryk travels to India to retrieve Misha's ashes and inadvertently gets embroiled in the Naxalite uprising, the Communist movement that sparked in 1970s India. Chakrabarti deftly explores the weight of history, a touching love story, and Jaryk's heart-wrenching survivor's guilt. Woven throughout is the play that teaches you not about life, but about dying. It prepared the orphans for the unimaginable, as Jaryk remembers. The narrative struggles under the weight of its responsibility to these compelling themes and shortchanges a few, such as the Communist uprising, while Jaryk's internal struggles and love for Lucy stretch on for too long. An impressive if occasionally labored debut. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.