Friedrich Dürrenmatt was known for his critical, restless, often caustic spirit - something that is confirmed by the small sample of his reflections offered in this volume. The selection of Dürrenmatt's opinions, criticisms, and aphorisms was made by Daniel Keel, who drew material from the author's entire body of work (which has been published in 37 volumes).

The anthologized Dürrenmatt opines, answers, and reflects on a variety of topics: God and the world, money and spirit, politics and philosophy, international relations, the Cold War and the nuclear threat, writing as a profession, theater and criticism, faith and knowledge, humor and tolerance, and many more.

As the Swiss newspaper "Berner Zeitung" wrote: "Anyone who wants to contemplate with the author Friedrich Dürrenmatt, to engage with his often labyrinthine thoughts in their most concise form, has only to try this small volume"; while the magazine "Tages-Anzeiger Magazin" noted, in reference to this anthology: "Dürrenmatt's unrestrained disposition to analyze and argue, his dramatic-dramaturgical way of thinking, which is expressed through contradictions, paradoxes, and metaphors, has woven a web of narrative and descriptive prose, a system without a system, a labyrinth that traverses and unites all his texts...".

It is evident that the excerpts that make up this anthology, these stimuli for thought, are nothing but "prompts", "stimuli", which presuppose the active participation of the reader in a process that - like any beneficial reading - could never be passive.