''Highcastle: A Remembrance'' ( pl, Wysoki Zamek) is a

coming-of-age Coming of age is a young person's transition from being a child to being an adult. The specific age at which this transition takes place varies between societies, as does the nature of the change. It can be a simple legal convention or can ...

autobiographical novel by Polish science fiction writer

Stanisław Lem Stanisław Herman Lem (; 12 September 1921 – 27 March 2006) was a Polish writer of science fiction and essays on various subjects, including philosophy, futurology, and literary criticism. Many of his science fiction stories are of satirical ...

.Irene Sywenky, "Spaces of Unhomeliness: Rereading Post-Imperial Urban Heterotopias in East Central Europe", In: , Written in 1965, it was first published in 1966 by

Wydawnictwo MON Bellona Publishing House ( pl, Wydawnictwo Bellona, formerly also ''Dom Wydawniczy Bellona'') is a private publishing house based in Warsaw, Poland. It was created in 1990 from restructuring of the state-run Wydawnictwo MON. It specialises in book ...

. It is a memoir of Lem's childhood and youth years spent in the

interwar In the history of the 20th century, the interwar period lasted from 11 November 1918 to 1 September 1939 (20 years, 9 months, 21 days), the end of the First World War to the beginning of the Second World War. The interwar period was relativel ...

Lwów (then a Polish city, present-day Lviv in Ukraine), with a good deal of philosophical musing on memory, imagination, and the impact of earlier years on later life. The novel title is a reference to the ruins of

Lviv High Castle The Lviv High Castle ( uk, Високий замок, translit=Vysokyi zamok; pl, Wysoki Zamek we Lwowie) is a historic castle located on the top of the Castle Hill of the city of Lviv. It is currently the highest point in the city, above sea ...

. Lem (as well as many critics) stated that the work is not a novel, in the sense that it does not have any fictional elements. It was translated into English by

Michael Kandel Michael Kandel (born December 24, 1941 in Baltimore, Maryland) is an American translator and author of science fiction. Biography Kandel received a doctorate in Slavistics from Indiana University. His most recent position was editor at the M ...

in 1995. In 2000,

MIT Press The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States). It was established in 1962. History The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT publish ...

reprinted it on the occasion of the upcoming 100th anniversary of the writer's birth in 1921.Andrew Liptak
"Beyond Solaris: New Editions Explore the Many Facets of SF Icon Stanislaw Lem"
March 3, 2020 It was also translated into Russian (1969), Bulgarian (1985) and Ukrainian (2002)."Станислав Лем - Высокий Замок"
''fantlab.ru''

References

Novels by Stanisław Lem 1966 novels Autobiographical novels {{Poland-stub