Hospital of the Transfiguration - Stanislaw Lem

Hospital of the Transfiguration by Stanislaw Lem / ISBN 9780262538497 / 221-page paperback from MIT Press *** “Absorbing, also, to watch Lem outline many of the themes and ideas that he will later develop brilliantly in his science fiction.” —Kirkus Reviews/   An early realist novel by Stanisław Lem, taking place in a Polish psychiatric hospital during World War II. Taking place within the confines of a psychiatric hospital, Stanisław Lem's The Hospital of the Transfiguration tells the story of a young doctor working in a Polish asylum during World War II. At first the asylum seems like a bucolic refuge, but a series of sinister encounters and incidents reveal an underlying brutality. The doctor 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. Meanwhile, Resistance fighters stockpile weapons in the surrounding woods. A very early work by Lem, The Hospital of the Transfiguration is