Hospital of the Transfiguration
(Book)

"A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book."

Translation of: Szpital Przemienienia.

"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.

Translated from the Polish.