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Ernst Jünger (1895-1998) was a German writer, publicist and ideologue of the conservative revolution who fought in both world wars. Due to his early fiction and journalistic works, he is considered a forerunner of National Socialism, although his later works, written after 1933, are marked by a covert criticism of the NSDAP. While serving as an officer in the First World War, Junger wrote one of his most famous books, In the Thunderstorms of Steel, in which he reflected on the phenomenon of war, gaining recognition among both militarists and pacifists.

After Hitler came to power, Junger consistently rejected the ruling party's offers to join its structures, holding right-wing conservative views. Despite his freethinking and independent stance, Jung remains untouched, as Hitler respects Jung for his services in the First World War. In the thirties, Jung published a collection of essays, Leaves and Stones, in which he covertly criticised Nazi racism, a novel, The African Games, and an important novel, On the Marble Rocks, which is considered a critique of the social nationalist regime.

During World War II, Junger found himself at the headquarters of the German occupation forces in Paris, where he wrote Gardens and Streets, which, after its publication in 1942 and translation into French, gained him a large following in Paris and brought him closer to members of the Resistance movement.

Ernst Jung's postwar years were marked by prolific creativity and many awards in the field of literature and culture. In total, Junger is the author of about fourteen books of an extremely wide range: from reflections on the phenomenon of war and memories of participation in hostilities, to the fantastic novels Heliopolis, Glass Bees, and Oimesville, where he begins to explore the concept of posthistory, and to autobiographical reflections on the influence of alcohol and various psychotropic drugs, including LSD, on human consciousness.

Ernst Jung is undoubtedly a remarkable writer and thinker who had the difficult fortune of living through the terrible, epochal fractures of twentieth-century Europe and of melting his experience into worthwhile and enduring texts, one of which is offered to you in this book.

The novel Glass Bees, which touches upon the themes of rapid technological progress and the replacement of the living with artificial imitation, seems fantastic only at first glance, because in the deeper layers of this text there are Junger's reflections on the rapid progress of mankind and the too rapid change in the foundations of life, when in the eternal desire for simplification and peace, people always get an even more complex life, full of anxiety and devoid of happiness. And not everyone will find a place in this new mechanistic and pragmatic world.

Not all cavalrymen are equally successful in switching from the horses of the old tradition to the tanks of progress, and the protagonist of the novel, Rotmistr Richard, is one of them. In search of work, which is becoming increasingly scarce for people of the previous generation, life brings Richard together with the mysterious and majestic Zapparoni, the creator of a powerful company that manufactures robots and puppets. Richard's predecessor in this position lost his mind in a short time, and now Zapparoni is looking for a new specialist to perform certain delicate tasks. But to make the final decision, Richard has to pass a test, the essence of which he does not quite understand and which gradually begins to take on a grotesque and sinister colour.