La chiocciola tackles the topic of the hikikomori, a Japanese term that defines the people who have decided to “stand apart,” to isolate themselves from society (it is estimated that there are several millions such people worldwide). The protagonist is Vittoria, a hikikomori girl aged 15. She spends her time in her own bedroom, taking pictures of people from her window, playing video games, reading comic books and watching videos, scared of the society outside, of its frenzied rhythm, without any real friends. Her inexistent raptors with her divorced parents, her mother a successful businesswoman in the fashion world, and her father transferred to New York, lead the girl to rely only on her grandfather, a botanist ad researcher who lives cut out from the modern times in a small village in Cilento, completely immersed in nature. Francesco has spent a lot of time in the company of Native American tribes, learning from them techniques for permaculture and for the conservation of seeds. Vittoria takes refuge there, in the slow rhythm of the countryside, in the lobe and wisdom of her grandfather, to once again find her balance and recover a meaning for her own life.