John William Cheever was an American short story writer and novelist, often referred to as "the Chekhov of the suburbs". Born on May 27, 1912, Cheever's works are predominantly set in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the Westchester suburbs, old New England villages based on various South Shore towns around Quincy, Massachusetts, where he was born, and Italy, especially Rome.

His notable short stories include "The Enormous Radio", "Goodbye, My Brother", "The Five-Forty-Eight", "The Country Husband", and "The Swimmer". Cheever also wrote five novels: The Wapshot Chronicle (National Book Award, 1958), The Wapshot Scandal (William Dean Howells Medal, 1965), Bullet Park (1969), Falconer (1977), and a novella, Oh What a Paradise It Seems (1982).

His writing themes often explored the duality of human nature, portraying the conflict between a character's decorous social persona and inner corruption, or between two characters, often brothers, who embody light and dark, flesh and spirit. Many of his works express nostalgia for a vanishing way of life, characterized by abiding cultural traditions and a profound sense of community, contrasted with the alienating nomadism of modern suburbia.

A compilation of his short stories, The Stories of John Cheever, won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and a National Book Critics Circle Award, and its first paperback edition won a 1981 National Book Award. On April 27, 1982, he was awarded the National Medal for Literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, just six weeks before his death on June 18, 1982. His work has been included in the Library of America.