The State of Us takes the reader from the twitching curtains of suburbia to the deserts of the Middle East, from the interior life of a street photographer to outer space, and back again. With an eye reminiscent of Samuel Beckett, the stories in it are often satirical, sometimes uncompromising and occasionally fabulous. What they have in common is a question - what are we doing? - and an answer that suggests we should look, more closely, at the state of us...