From the Back Cover

“Coming back over the years, from Africa, Asia and various European countries, I have grown used to being labelled exotic — in this case meaning cosmopolitan. Fortunately for me, Irish society is evolving in the direction of the cosmopolitan, which may mark an end to the shouting match between those who go away and are sneered at as writers of travelogue, and those who stay at home and are sneered at as purveyors of authentic Gaelic misery, whether of the Northern or Southern varities, for consumption in the Irish Studies departments and archival collections of wealthy American universities. As Eliot says, here and there cease to matter as one grows older. Only the common human fate remains. And the city named in a poem — be it Bangkok or Paris, Dublin or Belfast — is incidental, no more than a prism through which a universal experience refracts itself.”

from “Coming Home” by Harry Clifton