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Randy Boyagoda, an author and University of Toronto professor, came up with the idea for his first young adult novel in 2018 while teaching a class in Rome,  where he found himself alone in a guest apartment that, a year earlier, had been filled with his family. 

He recently told the CBC that it was an empty dining room table that got him thinking about what one would do if they knew their loved ones were about to disappear, setting the stage his dystopian tale, .

Published in June, the novel is set in a fictional country in the Global South that is ravaged by conflict and disease. The children of a wealthy family are sent to a special camp on a remote island for safekeeping alongside other children of the elite.

However, the children discover the camp isn’t what it appears to be and become suspicious of their so-called guardians. The main character, Sabel, along with her siblings, devise a plan to escape.

“I don't think I started out with the intention of writing a young adult novel,” says Boyagoda, a professor of English in U of T’s Faculty of Arts & Science and vice dean, undergraduate. “I wrote  that was published in 2021 during the pandemic.”

Boyagoda and his wife later organized a family book club meeting in their backyard where they talked about the short story, which he had left open-ended.

His youngest daughter had a query: What happened next?

“And it struck me as a question worth pursuing,” says Boyagoda. “So I began writing it out – what would happen next to these kids? Where would they go? What would happen to them wherever they were going?”

Boyagoda recounted the story’s origins on.

 “I really missed my family, because of the memory of when we had all been together there,” he said on the program. “I started imagining a table full of family, and then just being there by yourself. What could have changed? Why did this family disappear? That got to me, and I thought, ‘What would you do if you knew your family was going to disappear?’ You would have a final meal together, before sending your kids off for safekeeping. That's how the story started.”

Focusing on a privileged family from the Global South was intentional, Boyagoda says.

“The popularity of dystopian fiction over the last few years in television and in books has been marked by a consistent white protagonist,” he says. “Think about The Hunger Games, or Station Eleven. They tend to be privileged white people who are suddenly faced with a world that’s falling apart. And so we follow these heroes as they figure out how to survive.”

Meanwhile, other stories set in the Global South tend to involve characters who live in worlds of extreme poverty and risk.

“The Global South is also full of ridiculously wealthy people,” says Boyagoda. “So what would happen if the main characters in a dystopic novel weren't upper middle class white people? What if a young adult novel about the Global South wasn't about extremely poor brown people?”

The book begins with a quote from Franz Kafka: “Children simply don’t have any time in which they might be children.” That resonated with Boyagoda, touching on the idea that, though children are often thrust into very adult situations and are forced to act and behave like adults, their childlike behaviour still shines through.

“Sabel and her four siblings have to figure out what they're going to do when they realize things aren't as they seemed. And as a result, they don't have time to be children.

“They can't just be kids about it, they can't take for granted that they're going to be kept safe. And yet, they're still children, they still bicker. There's still sibling rivalry, even in situations where the stakes could be mortal. There's still crushes, there's still competition for attention.”

Boyagoda says the book also offers an opportunity for young readers and their parents to discuss some of the world’s current challenges.

“One of the ways that dystopia generally works is that we’re meant to imagine a version of contemporary life taken to its negative extremes,” he says. “These are books in which civil war, disease, inequality, pressures of climate have been taken to such an extreme point that things have broken in this world.

“So what happens to our humanity, to our prospects as individuals, family members and friends when current challenges and sources of division and decline are taken to their extremes? It would be my hope that a novel like this would be an occasion for parents and children together to talk these things through.”

Boyagoda also hopes young readers will enjoy rereading book.

“I've always felt this as a reader myself,” he says. “Whenever I want to reread something, that's an indicator that something significant has happened in the story that will sustain my imagination a second time through. Sometimes it's the beauty of the writing. Sometimes it's the intensity of the story. And this might be the case with Little Sanctuary – it might be to figure out the mystery in retrospect.

“In other words, there's lots of Easter eggs, but you don't see them the first time through.”