Best Of John B Keane: Collected Humorous Writings - Softcover

John B Keane

Softcover

ISBN 10: 185635265X ISBN 13: 9781856352659

Publisher: Mercier Press, 1994

Synopsis

John B. Keane is known nationally and internationally as a successful playwright, handling tragedy and comedy with equal art, and as a prose fiction writer of great invention and skill. Yet an equal claim to fame is made by the hundreds of short pieces which have been published in more than a dozen highly popular collections, their titles ranging from the polemical to the surreal, from Inlaws and Outlaws to Is the Holy Ghost Really a Kerryman? Now harvested into a single volume, they represent the distillation of the experience of a funny, witty, wise and passionate observer of the bright tapestry of Irish life. John B. Keane's topics naturally include his lifetime love affair with his native county of Kerry. Yet even the Kingdom must give way to his fealty to his remarkable home town of Listowel. All human life is there, and he tells its story in a remarkable procession of remarkable characters and in rare humorous glimpses of his own career. There are mouth-watering disquisitions on food and paeans of drink, and since Kerry people do not live by bread alone, there is much about their two other preoccupations - love and words. The Best of John B. Keane is a collection to prize and an ideal bedside book or travelling companion.

About this title

About the Author

John B. Keane, playwright, poet and fiction writer, was born in Listowel, County Kerry, in 1928 and died in his home town on 30 May 2002. His first play, Sive, a rural tragedy of love and greed, was rejected by the Abbey Theatre but made a sensational impact on its first - amateur - production and has come to be seen as a classic work. Among his other notable plays are Sharon's Grave (1960), Big Maggie (1969) and The Field (1965), which was successfully filmed. The death of John B. Keane, after a long battle with cancer, was mourned by the Irish nation. He was a Listowel man, a Kerryman and an Irishman; his appeal - whether as raconteur, playwright or novelist - was universal.

Edition details

• Publisher: Mercier Press
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 185635265X
• ISBN 13: 9781856352659
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 365