Holocaust and the Stars

Taylor & Francis

This book is a groundbreaking study of one of the greatest science fiction writers, the Polish master Stanis\u0142aw Lem. It offers a new direction in research on his oeuvre and corrects several errors commonly appearing in his biographies. The author painstakingly recreates the context of Lem\u2019s early life and his traumatic experiences during the Second World War due to his Jewish background, and then traces these through original and brilliant readings of his fiction and non-fiction. She considers language, worldbuilding, themes, motifs and characterization as well as many buried allusions to the Holocaust in Lem\u2019s published and archival work, and uses these fragments to capture a different side of Lem than previously known. The book discusses various issues concerning the writer\u2019s life, such as his upbringing in a Jewish, Zionist-minded family, the extensive relations between the Lem family and the elite of Lviv at that time, details of the Lem family killed during t.