Ewald Murrer - written as a compilation of diary entries, this book relates the strange happenings witnessed by a group of villagers—among whom are a rabbi, a magic goat, an ancient Gypsy, a family of unicorn hunters, and a fortuneteller—in an atmospherically surreal Galicia where people and beasts float across the landscape, leaving only cryptic traces of their passage.

 

Ewald Murrer, The Diary of Mr. Pinke. Trans. by Alice Pišťková, with additional translations by Jed Slast. Twisted Spoon Press, 2022

excerpt (issu)

excerpt

Written as a compilation of diary entries, [this book] relates the strange happenings witnessed by a group of villagers—among whom are a rabbi, a magic goat, an ancient Gypsy, a family of unicorn hunters, and a fortuneteller—in an atmospherically surreal Galicia where people and beasts float across the landscape, leaving only cryptic traces of their passage. . . This new English edition includes Murrer’s original full-color collages and is based on the 2018 Czech re-edition that was substantially revised and augmented by the author.

Written as a compilation of diary entries, [this book] relates the strange happenings witnessed by a group of villagers—among whom are a rabbi, a magic goat, an ancient Gypsy, a family of unicorn hunters, and a fortuneteller—in an atmospherically surreal Galicia where people and beasts float across the landscape, leaving only cryptic traces of their passage. . . This new English edition includes Murrer’s original full-color collages and is based on the 2018 Czech re-edition that was substantially revised and augmented by the author.

I think the "presage" verses lend [the] story a unique essence and represent a new poetic form!— Jiří Kolář

Murrer's poetic vision is unarguably one of the most remarkable in all of contemporary Czech poetry.— Vladimír Novotny, Institute of Czech Literature

... a journey into a skillfully crafted "otherworld."— The Prague Post

Ewald Murrer's The Diary of Mr. Pinke is one of those rare book finds that compels you read it all over again.— Velvet Magazine

[The book] is extraordinary from the outset. An otherworldly Chagall-like atmosphere where the mundane is metamorphosed into the marvelous, a fragment that is simultaneously a whole.— Emil Juliš

Ewald Murrer, Dreams at the End of the Night. Twisted Spoon Press, 1999

In the short texts that comprise DREAMS AT THE END OF THE NIGHT Murrer employs his lyrical talents to create a semiotic fantasy world where every gesture is a sign, every occurrence a communication.

"Murrer's poetic vision is unarguably one of the most remarkable in all of contemporary Czech poetry" -- Vladimir Novotny, Institute of Czech Literature

. . . evocative language and narrative structure that actually makes you sit up. -- The Prague Post, May 19, 1999

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. At the end of the 20th century he has portrayed a celebration of boredeom, 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 any effect, and Murrer goes further than many of his contemporary unfortunates in admitting the consequence. His book is a venturesome pilgrimage whose end offers no answer. -- Alena Blazejovska, Tvar, January, 1997

Ewald Murrer was born in 1964, in Prague. From 1985-90 he was employed by the President's Office as a gardener at Prague Castle. Free to publish officially after the Velvet Revolution, his work appeared in numerous anthologies, such as Child of Europe (Penguin Books), Daylight in Nightclub Inferno (Catbird), and This Side of Reality (Serpent's Tail). In 1992, he launched Iniciály, which immediately became an influential venue for young writers. Starting with the The Diary of Mr. Pinke in 1990/93, Murrer published a number of poetry and short-prose collections over the decade while working as an editor for some of the leading magazines and radio. Then he took a long break. Since 2018 nearly a dozen new volumes have appeared, including a trilogy of "stories in verse," the first of which, Night Reading in 2019, won the Magnesia Litera Prize for Poetry Book of the Year. Murrer lives in Prague and currently works as a web administrator.