Why are we not slaves to our genes and how do we differ from chimpanzees? What is epigenetics and why does tenderness during breastfeeding determine how a newborn mouse will behave throughout its later life? How does a monogamous rat turn into an uninhibited Don Juan and how do substances like dopamine, serotonin, or cocaine affect our behavior? Why will we always be the losers in the war against microbes?

What do "primitive" single-celled organisms that thrive in bubbling waters refer to? What information do the spacecraft we have sent give us about life on other planets? This book seeks answers to all the above questions and many more.

Each of its 19 short essays is like a fairy tale, as Nobel laureate Rolf Zinkernagel writes in the preface. With a narrative style—often in the first person—and a reflective, sometimes poetic mood, it transports us to a garden full of wonders, the invisible garden of molecular and cellular biology, biochemistry, and genetics – the garden of our self-knowledge.

This is the second book by Gottfried Schatz in Greek. Like the first, Beyond Genes, it includes a series of articles-essays that were published for the first time in the reputable Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung.