‘Peter Carey is one of the great story-tellers of our time, the kind who make you take the telephone off the hook, forget the television and ignore the doorbell.’ New York Review of Books Description of book Double Booker Prize-winner Peter Carey's dazzling stories from The Fat Man in History and War Crimes are collected in one volume, together with three vintage stories not previously published in book form. In each story Carey reveals the surreal within the ordinary. A man begins peeling off his girlfriend's clothes and then layers of her skin to discover another person underneath. A lone soldier who is guarding a fence that runs across the desert forgets which side is which. A mild-mannered architect, fearing that his lover will leave him because he is too ordinary, plots to steal a drug-dealer's secret cache. Collected Stories is a testament to Carey's remarkable imagination and his exceptional achievements in the short-story form. Reviews 'Peter Carey is one of the great story-tellers of our time, the kind who make you take the telephone off the hook, forget the television and ignore the doorbell.' London Evening Standard 'Peter Carey stands among the great writers in the English language today.' Paul Auster 'Reading his stories is like being shot by a firing squad of angels.' Jill Neville, Sydney Morning Herald 'Impressive and entertaining…Each story ends on a melancholy but powerful note, like the sudden discharge of electrical energy which illuminates all that it touches.' Peter Ackroyd, Sunday Times