If, in some post-Marxist utopia, obesity were declared counterrevolutionary, how would a houseful of fat men strike back? If it were possible to win a new body by lottery, what kind of people would choose ugliness? If two gun-toting thugs decided to take over a business—and run it through sheer terror—how far would their methods take them?

These are the questions that Peter Carey, author of The Tax Inspector and Oscar and Lucinda, brilliantly explores in this collection of stories. Exquisitely written and thoroughly envisioned, the tales in The Fat Man in History reach beyond their arresting premises to utter deep and often frightening truths about our brightest and darkest selves.