books @ cc.

From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy
by Stanisław Lem (1977)

Ijon Tichy (who has also appeared in many other Lem’s works) is ordered by Professor Tarantoga to attend the Eight World Futurological Congress held in the Costa Rica. Isolated inside the first-rate convention site (The Costa Rica Hilton) are the futurologists preparing their congress, alongside the Plenary Council of Student Protest Veterans, the Convention of Publishers of Liberated Literature, and a Philumenist (matchbook collector) Society meeting, while political troubles are brewing outside.

Fables for the Cybernetic Age
by Stanisław Lem (1975)

Aptly subtitled “Fables for the Cybernetic Age”, The Cyberiad is a collection of fairy-tale-ish science fiction stories by Stanisław Lem focusing on the adventures of Trurl and Klapaucius, two best friends and rival intelligent robot “constructors”.

by Witold Gombrowicz (1937)

A parody of common literary forms in prewar Polish literature, in Ferdydurke a 30-year-old complacent narrator, Johnnie (who, like Gombrowicz, has also published a book called Memoirs of a Time of Immaturity), is dragged by an old, all-cultural imposing professor Pimko back to secondary school, where everyone believes him as another poseur juvenile, “inclined to pose in order to appear grown up”.