A Vision of the World: Selected Short Stories

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The first authorised selected collection of the twentieth-century's most influential short story writer. 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 to the heart of human experience, and remain a testament to the wit and vision of one of the most important and influential short story writers of the twentieth century. 'Reading Cheever is a restless pleasure, the work never settles- these brilliant stories make me get up and walk around the room' Anne Enright

Reviews

One of the great writers of the previous century -- John Self * The Times *
There was a time in my life when I thought I would have to find a support group for people who loved Cheever as much as I do... I would write out his sentences by hand at times to see what does that feel like, to be able to have that felicity of language -- Elizabeth Strout
As stories go, as compellingly readable narratives of a certain sort of people in a certain time and place - our time and place-John Cheever's stories are, simply, the best * Washington Post *
[Cheever's] magical capacity for marrying the quotidian with the surreal, so often soars. The new volume feels capacious, stuffed as it is with wonders * Sunday Times *
John Cheever is an enchanted realist, and his voice, in his luminous short stories...is as rich and distinctive as any of the leading voices of postwar American literature -- Philip Roth
Profound and daring...some of the most wonderful stories any American has written * Boston Globe *
Cheever shows a sublime psychological understanding of all that goes unsaid - whatever's not mentioned between couples is fully present and felt -- A M Homes

Author Bio

John Cheever (Author) John Cheever was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1912, and he went to school at Thayer Academy in South Braintree. He is the author of seven collections of stories and five novels. His first novel, The Wapshot Chronicle, won the 1958 National Book Award. In 1965 he received the Howells Medal for Fiction from the National Academy of Arts and Letters and in 1978 he won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer prize. Shortly before his death in 1982 he was awarded the National Medal for Literature. Julian Barnes (Introducer) Julian Barnes is the author of thirteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and Sunday Times bestsellers The Noise of Time and The Only Story. He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and three books of non-fiction, including the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life and Nothing To Be Frightened Of, which won the 2021 Yasnaya Polyana Prize in Russia. In 2017 he was awarded the Legion d'honneur.