William Weaver is considered the preeminent living English language translator of Italian literature. Best known for his translations of the novels of Umberto Eco and Italo Calvino, he has translated many other prominent Italian authors during a career spanning over fifty years.

Born in 1923 in Virginia, USA and educated at Princeton University, Weaver was an ambulance driver in Italy during World War II for the American Field Service, and lived primarily in Italy after the end of the war. Through his friendships with Elsa Morante, Alberto Moravia and others, Weaver met many of Italy's leading authors and intellectuals in Rome in the late 1940s and early 1950s; he paid tribute to them in his anthology Open City (1999). Most recently, Weaver was a professor of literature at Bard College in New York.