A performance artist opens his chest and displays his beating heart on stage. A young man walks through the hills of south-west Romania, where the locals have peculiar ideas about gold. On the morning of a medical examination, a woman tries to coax her husband off the roof. A smuggler pays off an old debt to his sister and resigns himself to a life of honest toil in the mine-shafts of his home town. A mysterious rodent named Brigitte enters the lives of two old men. And, in the astonishing long story In the Neighbourhood', the inhabitants of a crumbling tower-block go about their business, unforgettably. The stories of Philip O Ceallaigh create a world that is utterly original and yet immediately recognizable a world of ordinary people grappling with work and idleness, ambition and frustration, wildness and sobriety, love and lust and decay. Scabrously honest, screamingly funny and beautifully crafted, Notes from a Turkish Whorehouse is a brilliant debut from a writer who cannot be ignored by anyone who cares about the art of fiction.

‘Winner of the 2006 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature’

‘An extraordinararily good writer … Seldom have I read a debut in which the author’s control of tone, dialogue and narrative contour is so masterful’ Michel Faber, Guardian

‘A truly superb book’ Dermot Bolger, Sunday Independent

‘Shows a lively talent at play’ Daily Telegraph

‘Brilliantly original … The most impressive debut by an Irish writer for some time’ Irish Independent

‘Impressive. Ó Ceallaigh has produced a remarkably assured and truly European collection of stories’ Sunday Tribune

‘Extraordinarily confident for a first collection of stories … remarkable for its sheer readability’ Ireland on Sunday

‘So assured is this debut collection that it can, convincingly and with confidence, echo Hemingway and Bukowski in terms of style and Kafka or Kelman, even some of the great Russians, in relation to theme. These amazingly well-crafted stories – intense, curious, mysterious, alluring – re-awaken the wonder of words and declare the availability of salvation in writing.’ Niall Griffiths

‘With this debut collection Philip O’Ceallaigh gives us not just a new voice, but a whole new literary space. It lies somewhere between Ireland and Eastern Europe, a place where characters live out his harsh and careful fables about men's failure to love women. This work was, at a guess, slow in the making – do not read it too fast.’ Anne Enright