A well-intentioned English family unwittingly becomes complicit in state violence while traveling through China. A ploddingly respectable London lawyer chances upon a stash of cocaine and realizes it offers the wealth and status he's always hungered for. A salesman in Africa gets caught up in a riot, and a Palestinian suicide bomber has a moment of self-doubt. Kneale transports readers across continents in a nanosecond, reaching to the heart of faraway societies with rare perceptiveness. With wry humor and razor-sharp satire, these twelve thought-provoking stories illuminate the moral uncertainty of our time. "Electrifies. . . . A firecracker in broad daylight, an out-of-nowhere bombshell sure to throw some sparks in the literary world. . . . Kneale's characters are wholly believable, his plots flawless. . . . [He is an] extraordinary author." — The San Diego Union-Tribune "Pitch-perfect. . . . Moves and transforms with a satisfying snap." — New York Post "Powerful. . . . Instantly engaging. . . . An irresistible literary feast." — Time Out (London) "Matthew Kneale has mastered [the] genre. . . . [He] has captured . . . the complexity of the world and the ways that people cope, or not, showcasing situations of moral ambiguity where roads not taken make all the difference." — The Seattle Times "Brilliant. . . . Well-crafted. . . . Perfect little tales, replete with short and witty denouements. . . . Every one of these 'crimes' is a page-turner." — New Statesman “ English Passengers is what fiction ought to be: ambitious, narrative-driven, with a story and a quest we don’t mind going on. On page after page I found myself laughing or nodding or simply envious. I was compelled from first to last and beyond. The characters are still living with me.” —Nicholas Shakespeare, author of Bruce Chatwin: A Biography “A robust intellectual entertainment: a comic sea-adventure, survival tale and quest for the Garden of Eden all rolled into one.” — The Globe and Mail “Every page fizzes with linguistic invention, and the interweaving of high comedy with dramatic terror is expertly handled.” — The Guardian “Sometimes a book comes along so full of wit and charm that it makes you glad you learned to read.” — Houston Chronicle 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 Barnes's A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, at times Primo Levi's The Periodic Table, Small Crimes In An Age of Abundance is a groundbreaking book, by a master narrator of the uncertainties of our time. Matthew Kneale is the author of serveral novels, including English Passengers , which won the Whitbread Book of the Year 2000 award and was short-listed for the Booker Prize. He lives in Rome, Italy. 1. Stone None of it would ever have happened if Tania had not become best friends with Sarah Spence. One moment Tania’s parents had hardly heard the name, and the next it seemed like they heard nothing else: Sarah Spence knew where to buy the best secondhand clothes, Sarah Spence had a CD by a fantastic new band, Sarah Spence said Friends of the Earth were just old hippies. At first Tania’s parents were happy enough, as Sarah Spence — an unexpectedly plain yet self-possessed girl — always treated them politely. But Tania’s father, Guy, began to lose patience when Sarah’s reported achievements were extended to travel. The Spences, Tania explained triumphantly, “were really adventurous,” going to exotic, faraway places all by themselves. Sarah’s father was a “totally brilliant linguist” and would learn Latin American Spanish or Bahasa Indonesian “just like that” so they coul