Hospital of the Transfiguration (English and Polish Edition)

From Publishers Weekly This first novel by the prolific science fiction author and essayist was completed in 1948, but wasn't published in Poland until 1975, after Lem's reputation was well established. Appearing in English for the first time, this is very much the work of a brash writer finding his way. As Poland falls to the Nazis during WW II in 1939, Stefan Trzyniecki, a young doctor, finds employment at a provincial insane asylum. He has been lured there by a fellow medical student who promises, "It's like being outside the Occupation, in fact it's even like being outside the world!" Stefan hopes that the asylum will be "a kind of extraterrestrial observatory" with "a delicious solitude in which a man naturally endowed with a fine intellect could develop in peace." But the insanity of the outside world soon intrudes on the madness within. While corrupt and callous doctors perpetrate hideous abuses on mental patients, the Nazis are capturing Polish resistance fighters nearby. When the Nazis move to liquidate the asylum and turn it into an SS hospital, betrayals abound; Stefan survives, but he has been transformed. Lem, who attended medical school in Poland, evokes the monstrosities of an archaic mental institution with the knife-edged clarity of bitterness. The ironies of Stefan's existence, which are echoed in many ways in Kundera's recent The Unbearable Lightness of Being , reveal much about how the author found his voice. Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal "Insane asylums have always distilled the spirit of the age." So claims one of the central characters in this, Lem's first novel, written in 1948 before he began his career in science fiction. And so Lem chose to set in a mental institution this gripping story of a young Polish doctor's attempt, following the Nazi invasion of 1939, to make sense of his world. The institution proves a microcosm of the chaos outside, for here doctors seem as deranged as their patients. That one patient is a famous poet also allows Lem to probe into the nature of art and provides insight into his literary development. Obviously the work of a young author, both in its passion and its occasional pontification, this should appeal particularly to college students but is highly recommended for all. David W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, Fla. Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. "The Hospital of the Transfiguration is a very early novel by Lem. it was written in 1948, but supppressed by Polish censors, and was not published until 1955. The book appeared in an English translation in 1988. The censorship of this early realist novel is partly what drove Lem to write in the vein of science fiction almost exclusively for the next thirty years. The book is partly autobiographical, about a doctor working in a Polish asylum during World War II. At first the asylum seems like a bucolic refuge to the young doctor, but a series of encounters and incidents reveal an underlying brutality. He begins to seek relief in the strange conversation of the poet Sekulowski, who is posing as a patient in a bid for safety from the occupying German forces. Resistance fighters stockpile weapons in the surrounding woods. In the end, German troops arrive and, under euthanasia program Action T4, slaughter most of the patients and staff. Kirkus reviews noted, "Absorbing, also, to watch Lem outline many of the themes and ideas that he will later develop brilliantly in his science fiction. All in all, not for the fainthearted, even though Lem is not yet at full power here.""-- Provided by publisher The pensive story of Stefan Trzyniecki, a directionless, despairing young doctor who takes a job at a provincial Polish mental hospital at the outset of World War II. There he confronts the absurdity of life through events that occur both inside and outside the asylum walls. While corrupt and callous doctors perpetrate hideous abuses on mental patients, the Nazis are capturing Polish resistance fighters nearby. When the Nazis move to liquidate the asylum and turn it into an SS hospital, betrayals abound It is 1939; the Nazis have occupied Poland. A young doctor disturbed by the fate of Poland joins the staff of an insane asylum only to find a world of pain and absurdity to match that outside. Translated by William Brand. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book