Collected Stories combines Peter Carey's bizarre, brilliant, chilling short stories from The Fat Man in History and War Crimes, plus three not in either.

Those from Fat Man 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.