{"product_id":"2026100010752-secondhand-the-fat-man-in-history","title":"The Fat Man In History","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Good\u003cbr\u003eJacket: No dust jacket\u003cbr\u003ePages: Yellowed\u003cbr\u003eCondition remarks: Condition as shown in image\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the strange, disquieting world of Peter Carey's The Fat Man in History, the ordinary rules of society have been quietly, menacingly rewritten — and the absurd has become the most reliable map of the real. This debut short story collection, first published in 1974, presents ten darkly imaginative tales in which bureaucratic tyranny, bizarre social hierarchies, and the alienation of modern life collide with savage wit and surrealist precision. From a society where obese men are persecuted as enemies of a revolution, to a man who sells versions of America from a suitcase, Carey conjures worlds that are simultaneously fantastical and uncomfortably recognisable.\n\nCarey's prose is a masterclass in controlled unease — deceptively plain in its language yet relentless in its accumulation of dread and dark comedy. Rooted in the tradition of Kafka and the absurdist fiction of the mid-twentieth century, yet unmistakably Australian in its irreverence and cultural anxiety, this collection announced the arrival of one of the great voices in contemporary Anglophone literature. For readers who have followed Carey's later triumphs — Oscar and Lucinda, True History of the Kelly Gang — this collection reveals the restless, genre-defying imagination that was always destined to reshape the literary landscape. How does a society decide who its monsters are, and what happens when the monstrous turns out to be entirely mundane?\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50609695391963,"sku":"2026100010752-SECONDHAND","price":10.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/b8c922ec-0748-40ab-abfc-f7dd6143714b.png?v=1791764677","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026100010752-secondhand-the-fat-man-in-history","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}