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.
