A Vision of the World

Selected and Introduced by Booker-Prize winner Julian Barnes

The first fully-authorised selected short stories from ''one of the great writers of the previous century'' (The Times)

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, John Cheever - variously referred to as ''Ovid in Ossining'' and the ''Chekhov of the suburbs'' - forever altered the landscape of contemporary literature. In a career that spanned nearly fifty years, his short stories, often published in the New Yorker, gave voice to the repressed desires and smouldering disappointments of 1950s America as it teetered on the edge of spiritual awakening and sexual liberation in the ensuing decades.

Up until now, John Cheever''s stories have only been available in Collected Stories, but with Julian Barnes'' selection we have the first fully authorised introduction to Cheever''s work. Satirical, fantastical, sad and transcendent, these are stories that speak directly