Jan Svankmajer wrote this remarkable book on tactile art when he stopped directing films after censorship by the Czechoslovakian government and experimented intensively with tactile phenomena and the creative imagination. Illustrated with over 100 images, the book is organized around many reproductions of Svankmajer's wondrous tactile art objects, tactile poems, experiments and games. It also includes dialogues with, and artworks by, other collaborating artists from the Group of Czech and Slovak Surrealists. Svankmajer also gathers together as contributors such notable exponents of tactual experience as Edgar Allen Poe, Guillaume Apollinaire, Salvador Dali, Marcel Duchamp, Meret Oppenheim, Ay-O, and F.T. Marinetti.Michael Havas, producer of some of Svankmajer's films, says of the book: 'it is typically Svankmajer: erudite and very consequential. Sometimes also very funny and erotic. Totally unique.'

Itikani, a young Australian Aborigine boy, has been brought up to become old shaman Makalai's successor. But Itikani transgresses the tribal Laws by allowing affection to develop between him and his stepsister Lamara, a girl of the same 'totemic skin', therefore forbidden to become his mate. Moreover, she has been promised to another, older member of the tribe as soon as she reaches puberty; shaman Makalai has his own lustful designs. When news arrives that 'devils' of immense magical powers have invaded an adjoining tribal land Makalai chooses Itikani to lead a party of warriors to confront them. The 'devils' are in fact white men and their herd of cattle. Such large animals, with enormously wide horns, have never before been seen by the young warriors and when a cattleman aims and discharges a rifle, the desert Aborigines are completely overcome. But the young shaman already knows some Aboriginal magic and puts it to good use in the life and death struggle with the 'devils' as well as with his own tribal enemy. And the Law? Is it immutable or is it subject to greater Laws? At what price? Now, when Itikani and Lamara are long gone, have their spirits crossed into the mythological world of Aboriginal Dreaming?

In the late 1990'a members of the Matcha family gather in a country town near Prague, Czech Republic, for their mothers funeral and wake.There are skeletons in this family's cupboard, even more so as the society's values have been distorted by several decades of a totalitarian system. The narrator of the story is Pepi, one of the sons, a wheelchair bound mute; but Pepi has a sharp mind and is acutely aware of the tensions that tear his family apart. Another son performs a shadowy function in a state ministry, even in the new 'free' society. Another is a chemist with a degree from a Moscow University where he was also taught to spy on his countrymen; his Russian wife was taught to spy on him. Another son is a window cleaner trying to keep up with his brothers. The fifth son escaped to Australia in the 1960s where he has his own family and is now being drawn into his brothers less-than-ethical dealings. The daughter, the youngest of them all, represents the new idealism and hopes of the nation. All these characters help to create a credible portrait of the post-socialist Czech Republic's people, their dreams and aspirations as well as the devils that haunt them. Pepi, in the end, offers himself as the sacrificial lamb to shock his family into something resembling a humane solution to their dilemmas.