Berkeley's Telephone and Other Fictions

by Harry Clifton

This is Clifton's first work of fiction. These nine stories and one novella examine arrivals and departures, identity and exile, sex and family and betrayal. He writes with a poet's eye about the alienation of the sons and daughters of middle-class Ireland going forth to encounter the world, and returning. Set in West Africa, Southeast Asia, Ireland, or continental Europe, they treat with equal conviction a savannah village and a disconnected priest, civil service offices, businessmen, and night watchmen on Dublin's docks. They expose human yearning and roaming and frailty. Together, the fictions of `Berkeley's Telephone' have the cohesiveness and drama of a novel.

240 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2001