Collected Stories

The first Penguin edition of Peter Carey's Collected Stories, with a cover by Michael Leunig, combines the brilliant, bizarre, funny, and chilling pieces originally published in The Fat Man in History and War Crimes (plus three stories not in either).

Those from The Fat Man in History posit what-ifs, with the title story wondering how, were some post-Marxist utopia to declare obesity counter-revolutionary, a household of fat men would strike back. Those from War Crimes are all, in one way or another, about power—those who wield it, those who want it, and those who recall only its dazzling exhilaration and degradation.

'Impressive and entertaining. Each story ends on a melancholy but powerful note, like the sudden discharge of electrical energy which illuminates all that it touches.' — Peter Ackroyd, Sunday Times

'Reading his stories is like being shot by a firing squad of angels.' — Jill Neville, Sydney Morning Herald

'His imagination is soaring, his style beautifully disciplined, his eye for the truth unblinking.' — Geoffrey Dutton, The Bulletin