Stanislaw Lem, one of the most prominent Polish authors not only in science fiction literature, has written down his childhood memories. In "The High Castle," Lviv of the 1920s and 1930s comes to life, "described with admirable accuracy," as Mario Szenessy noted in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: "I have rarely read descriptions of such compelling intensity, or rather: devoured them, for they kept me breathless; they are more thrilling than the most intelligent crime novel." However, Lem seems to view his hometown only seemingly through the eyes of a child and adolescent. In the search for lost time, it realizes itself into an uninterrupted present. "Thus, time was an abyss, immobile within itself, equally powerless, inactive. Much happened within it, much like in a sea, yet it...