This is a book with a distinct autobiographical element. The author—in the late 1960s heavily involved in politics, campaigning for the West German Social Democrats and later Chancellor Willy Brandt—explains the reasons and goals of his civic activism, shares his reflections, and cites Albrecht Dürer, Arthur Schopenhauer, and August Bebel as witnesses. The writer points to what he considers the most appropriate path in life: the path of gradual transformation. He chooses the snail as a symbol of unhurried, reticent yet thoughtful and persistent pursuit of a goal. The author is aided in his snail philosophy by the fictional character of a Gdańsk high school professor, Hermann Ott, nicknamed Wątpisz, who hid from the Nazis in Kashubia for five years. The present – as is often the case with Grass – is strongly linked to the past, to the years of Nazism and to the tragedy of the Jewish community of Gdańsk, which was doomed to extermination.