Zygmunt Bauman, a leading British sociologist of Polish origin in his last book zooms in on the contemporary tendencies as symptoms of the nostalgic longing for an idealized imaginary past.

The future is no more perceived as a land of hopes for a better life but due to “liquidity“ of the contemporary period as a threatening and dangerous place. Titles of the chapters offer a clue “Back to Hobbes?“, “Back to Tribes“, “Back to Inequality”, “Back to the Womb”. All the mentioned tendencies introduce us to the ideas which Bauman (based on Thomas Moore's Utopie) calls Retrotopia. According to the retrotopic visions we should not look for or expect a brighter future but come back to the good old times, to the more or less remote, misrepresented or nonexistent past.

Bauman's Retrotopia can be seen as one of those novels which attempt to analyze the roots of the contemporary crises in society and examine in detail a wide range of their reflections. In his book, Bauman openly warns against the consequences of the crises and our indifference and offers a strenuous way to overcome them.