{"product_id":"2026100009420-secondhand-the-fat-man-in-history-signed","title":"The Fat Man In History (SIGNED)","description":"\u003cp\u003eEdition: First Edition\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Very good\u003cbr\u003eJacket: Very good\u003cbr\u003ePages: Yellowed\u003cbr\u003eMarkings: Signed\u003cbr\u003eCondition remarks: DJ: unclipped; slightly faded, in mylar. Pages: yellowed. Binding remains tight. Clean copy.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn a world tilted off its axis by bizarre logic and quiet menace, Peter Carey's The Fat Man in History announces the arrival of one of Australia's most audacious literary imaginations. This debut collection of short stories presents a gallery of ordinary lives trapped in extraordinary, often grotesque circumstances — from obese men who become symbols of political resistance, to characters adrift in surreal bureaucratic nightmares — each tale constructed with the precision of a fable and the unease of a fever dream.\n\nCarey's prose is deceptively spare, wielding dark comedy and dystopian imagery to dissect themes of power, identity, and social alienation in modern society. First published in 1974, the collection established his signature style: a postmodern sensibility shot through with distinctly Australian anxieties. Compared by critics to the work of Kafka and Borges yet unmistakably his own, Carey leaves the reader perpetually off-balance — certain only that the next story will shatter whatever assumptions the last one left intact.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49203104252123,"sku":"2026100009420-SECONDHAND","price":1500.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/4db52e73-c4d4-403f-b695-6e522266b39f.png?v=1788143778","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026100009420-secondhand-the-fat-man-in-history-signed","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}