Irish · 1904–1996
Molly Keane wrote about Anglo-Irish society with insider knowledge and devastating wit. "Good Behaviour" (1981), shortlisted for the Booker Prize, follows a woman whose "perfect manners" mask a lifetime of cruelty and self-deception. Keane had published under a pseudonym in the 1930s; after decades of silence, she returned with novels that anatomized her own class without mercy.