Wall Street Crash

After years of rapid speculation and expanding credit, share prices on the New York Stock Exchange fell sharply in October 1929. The selling culminated around Black Thursday and Black Tuesday, wiping out fortunes and damaging banks, businesses and household confidence.

The crash did not alone cause the Great Depression, but it intensified financial instability and became its most recognisable symbol. Its effects spread through international credit, trade and employment.

The Thief of Time places its ageless narrator amid the crash, using sudden financial loss as one of the historical reversals through which he repeatedly remakes his identity.