Publisher Description

Confined within the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto, Dr Janusz Korczak struggles to protect the children at his orphanage from the horrors of the Second World War. There is not enough food or pairs of eyes to keep watch over them. Between a troublemaking thief, an abandoned girl, a malnourished boy, and a violin prodigy, Janusz has his hands full, but together they fight for beauty and hope in a world crumbling around them.Based on the advocacy work of Dr Janusz Korczak, Hannah Moscovitch's powerful play The Children's Republic is a reminder of the hope that can still be found in a world devoid of freedom and the necessities of life.

Author Biography

Hannah Moscovitch is an acclaimed Canadian playwright, TV writer, and librettist whose work has been widely produced in Canada and around the world.Recent stage work includes The Children's Republic, Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes and Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story (co-created with Christian Barry and Ben Caplan).She has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Trillium Book Award, the Nova Scotia Masterworks Arts Award, the Scotsman Fringe First and the Herald Angel Awards at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and the prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize administered by Yale University. She has been nominated for the international Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Drama Desk Award, Canada's Siminovitch Prize in Theatre, and the Governor General's Literary Award.She is a playwright-in-residence at Tarragon Theatre in Toronto. She lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Review

'Hannah Moscovitch has found a fresh window into one of the most extensively documented horrors of the Second World War' * Globe and Mail *
'Moscovitch's truthful and nuanced dialogue tells the story of The Children's Republic with great dexterity and heart, creating characters so palpably real it's all you can do to not leap out of your chair and try to save them' * My Entertainment World *

Review Quote

"It's one of those things you'll have in your head for a long time... It's Hannah Moscovitch at her best... at her grittiest, at her most eloquent, poetic, and that sure goes a long way." --David Lennam, CBC Radio

Description for Sales People

Janusz's diary from this time was published in 1958. Janusz, thirteen staff members, and 200 children were taken to the Treblinka extermination camp in August 1942. None survived.

Details