Book excerpt: Born in 1964 in Prague, Ewald Murrer belongs to that generation of Czech artists who came of age during the last years of the communist regime and who immediately afterward began to have their work disseminated in official publications. He is the author of numerous volumes of poetry in his native language and has appeared in anthologies and journals internationally. He is also the author of The Diary of Mr. Pinke. "Ewald Murrer has produced a book that perhaps seems at first to be a catalog of illustrations to Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams, but which ultimately, and primarily, awaits a sign, i.e., searches for meaning. Murrer rather clairvoyantly mirrors himself as author, and this is done expressly in the text. At the end of the 20th century he has portrayed a celebration of boredom, the stifling of which by momentary ecstasy, or Ecstasy, is futile. The transformation of illusion into disillusion occurs at the moment when drugs (of any sort) cease to have an effect, and Murrer goes further than many of his contemporary unfortunates in admitting the consequence.