The author of the award-winning novel English Passengers takes readers around the world in twelve deftly crafted stories that illuminate the uncertainties of life at home and abroad.Matthew Kneale received high praise for the prize-winning English Passengers, an epic romp on the high seas and across nineteenth-century cultures, ingeniously woven together by a multitude of narrators. In Small Crimes In An Age of Abundance, Kneale brings his mastery of storytelling to our present morally ambiguous world. Set in lands ranging from England to China, South America, the Middle East, and Africa, these powerfully themed stories follow ordinary people as they try to survive and make sense of their worlds.We follow a well-intentioned English family who leave their tour group in China to travel alone, and collide with the ruthless side of the country, slowly becoming complicit in its violence; a ploddingly respectable London lawyer who chances upon a stash of cocaine and realizes it offers the wealth and status he hungers for; a salesman in Africa who becomes caught up in a riot that turns his life upside down; a self-doubting suicide bomber.Kneale transports readers across continents in a nanosecond, reaching to the heart of faraway societies with rare perceptiveness. As the stories gain momentum tense, funny, and always compassionate they make readers see the world in a new way. At times reminiscent of Julian Barness A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, at times Primo Levis The Periodic Table, Small Crimes In An Age of Abundance is a groundbreaking book, by a master narrator of the uncertainties of our time.From the Hardcover edition.
In his own words ... 'I was born in London in 1960 and brought up in Barnes, studying at Latymer Upper School, Hammersmith. After school I caught the travel bug - I've never lost it - on a four-month trip across Italy and Greece. I then studied Modern History at Magdalen College, specializing in the nineeteenth century. When I finished I knew I wanted to write fiction, but wasn't quite sure how to set about this. I ended up taking a plane to Tokyo where I found work teaching English. As a lone Englishman - there was no other foreigner in the area where I lived - it was a strange and at times difficult existence, but I learnt a great deal about the country, and it was then I first tried writing short stories. After returning to England I completed my first novel, Whore Banquets, which is set in Japan, and attempts to offer a wry look at mutual cultural incomprehension. It was published in 1987 and won a Somerset Maugham Award in 1988.'
Matthew Kneale is the author of three critically acclaimed novels, including Sweet Thames, which won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and English Passengers, which won the Whitbread Novel of the Year for 2000 and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He now lives in Oxford.
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