Janusz Zajdel is a polish science-fiction writer. His books are focused on showing a societies in a far future, which are living under totalitarian regimes or subjected to political and social oppression. His books are pretty predictable in some way.
A group of settlers are about to settle on a planet of another system, but for unknown reasons they break contact with Earth. An expedition sets off from Earth to investigate what has happened. It encounters one of the settlers’ ships, returning towards Earth, with only one man on board. Altough it’s a science-fiction book, the author focuses on the relationships between people, the depiction of hierarchies in new societies, the rise to power and the struggle for dignity. Issues related to technology are only a background to the events here.
To me, the book is a commentary on the reality in which it was written. The 1980s were a time of increased repression and economic collapse under the communist authorities in Poland of the time.