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.