An apocalyptic novel by German writer Gunther Grass, based on a dialogue between the narrator and a rat given to him. He travels through the devastated Earth, and she tells him the story of the death of mankind and the seizure of power on Earth by rats — the only survivors in Danzig after the use of neutron bombs and who built their own civilization based on solidarity. The narrator argues with a new picture of the world, putting forward his theories that become possible scenarios for the films of the media mogul, the hero of Oscar Macerath's "Tin Drum": about the artist Lothar Malskate and the problem of authenticity, about dead forests, about five women who go to explore the local population of jellyfish in the Baltic Sea and secretly search for the legendary Vineet as a place of female utopias. The novel is being published in Russian for the first time.