Stanislav Lem - witness of disaster

Stanislav Lem (1921-2006) is the most famous writer of Poland in the second half of the 20th century and the first science fiction to the east of Germany, famous for the whole world. However, the personality of Lem, like his work, remains not completely solved: there are too many contradictions in the writer’s biography. Why did Lem hate and loved Russia at the same time? Why did he create science fiction in the genre if he could not stand it as a reader? How did he survive the Nazi occupation and how did this experience affect his worldview? Vadim Volobuev is looking for answers to these questions in his book, tracing the fate of Lem as the story of an intellectual who became not only a witness, but in many ways a victim of a ruthless XX century. The author enters the fate of a science fiction at the context of Polish history, so important for understanding his personality and artistic method. Vadim Volobuev is a historian and political scientist, senior researcher at the Modern History Department of Central and South -East Europe, the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences