Berkeley's Telephone, the first book of fiction by the poet Harry Clifton, is a darkly dazzling story-cycle concerned with arrivals and departures, identity and exile, sex and family and betrayal.

Some of these stories are set in Africa, Asia or continental Europe, others in Ireland; they treat with equal conviction savannah villages and civil-service offices, businessmen and night-watchmen. They are all about human yearning and wandering.

Together they have the cohesiveness and drama of a novel. The title story has been selected for Phoenix Irish Short Stories edited by David Marcus (July 2000).