William Trevor was born in Mitchelstown, County Cork, Ireland, in 1928. He is the author of fourteen much-lauded novels: he won the Whitbread Prize three times and was short-listed for the Booker Prize four times. Trevor was widely recognized to be one of the greatest short-story writers in the English language. In 1999 William Trevor received the prestigious David Cohen Literature Prize in recognition of a lifetime's literary achievement, and in 2002 he was awarded an honorary knighthood for his services to literature. He died in 2016.