La lotería en Babilonia

by Jorge Luis Borges

Cuento "La lotería en Babilonia".

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Classics, Philosophy, Magical Realism, Literature, Fantasy

14 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 1941

About the author

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator regarded as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known works, Ficciones (transl. Fictions) and El Aleph (transl. The Aleph), published in the 1940s, are collections of short stories exploring motifs such as dreams, labyrinths, chance, infinity, archives, mirrors, fictional writers and mythology. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and the fantasy genre, and have had a major influence on the magic realist movement in 20th century Latin American literature.
Born in Buenos Aires, Borges later moved with his family to Switzerland in 1914, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955, he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind by the age of 55. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. By the 1960s, his work was translated and published widely in the United States and Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages.
In 1961, he came to international attention when he received the first Formentor Prize, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971, he won the Jerusalem Prize. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by the growing number of English translations, the Latin American Boom, and by the success of Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. Writer and essayist J.M. Coetzee said of him: "He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish-American novelists."

Reviews

[Glenn Russell]

Feeling lucky?

Test your luck by reading The Lottery of Babylon by Jorge Luis Borges. Of course, you know such an offer amounts to little more than a joke: how much luck comes into play reading a short story, even one written by the great Jorge Luis Borges?

On the other hand, what would it take for you to buy a lottery ticket? Judging by the number of people around the globe who regularly play the lottery (millions every day), it doesn't take that much.

Why is this? Surely one of the top reasons is the fact that buying a lottery ticket is so incredibly easy. And people can put so much energy in choosing their "lucky" numbers. I suppose many women and men enjoy the idea they stand a chance of winning a pile of gold so they can be freed up from having to show up every day at their crap job and start living their dream.

I myself have never felt the urge to play the lottery; I never bought a lottery ticket; I don't follow the size of the grand prize or watch the drawing of the winning number - nothing about gambling or the lottery has ever held any appeal for me.

Perhaps this accounts for the reason I find the narrator in The Lottery of Babylon the least appealing narrator of any of the Borges tales I've read.

Added to this, the story has a strong totalitarian edge to it - the Company running the lottery in Babylon quickly takes on the status of the state, a state having absolute power over each and every individual, where the Company can bestow a high office on a winner or, much more likely, condemn losers to torture or prison or death. With such a lottery run by such a Company in such a state, I wouldn't think the Babylonians wouldn't find the below advertisement for their Babylonian lottery charming or the least bit funny.



No, the lottery is not something I'll ever play. This is certainly a prime reason I'm attracted to reading and writing So much of the creative process depends not on luck or chance but on honing one's skill by continual practice. One of my favorite quotes for aspiring writers: "Read, read, read. Write, write, write."

How much of your life do you attribute to chance? How much to fate? How much to your own efforts? After reading The Lottery in Babylon, will you change any of your answers?

[Brian Yahn · Rating 3 out of 5]

What Borges does with the allegory between the Lottery and religion and fate is satirically genius. And unlike most shorts of this nature, it's not cryptic and the meaning is pretty straight-forward. Still though, much like a Hemingway story, it reads more like a philosophical thought experiment than a narrative, which isn't really my thing.

[Andrei Vasilachi · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating little story (or philosophical thought-experiment) in which an unreliable narrator is waiting for a ship to sail as he's rushing to tell us about a mysterious lottery in Babylon that influences our world to this day—we believe the universe is a random generator of things, of circumstances, of fate, of luck, call it whatever you want—it all started there, in The Lottery of Babylon, initiated by a secretive "Company"; yes, it's very conspiratorial, and yes, it's great.

"I have known what the Greeks did not: uncertainty." declares the narrator, alluding to how the Ancient Greeks saw the world as an ordered cosmos managed by Gods, as he begins the story of how The Lottery was introduced (which by definition is defined by chance, not by right and wrong).

"My father related that anciently—a matter of centuries; of years?—the lottery in Babylon was a game of plebeian character. He said (I do not know with what degree of truth) that barbers gave rectangular bits of bone or decorated parchment in exchange for copper coins. A drawing of the lottery was held in the middle of the day: the winners received, without further corroboration from chance, silver- minted coins. The procedure, as you see, was elemental."

But these lotteries did not last, they were boring and there was no real risk involved, no danger. So someone made a small but important reform: introduce a "punishing ticket" for each 30 favored numbers—a sort of Russian roulette to get your pulse go up. And it worked, soon enough, most Babylonians were hooked on this lottery—suddenly, everyone wanted to participate, and those who didn't were frowned upon:

"This slight danger—for each thirty favored numbers there would be one adverse number—awoke, as was only natural, the public's interest."

Then it got more complicated, the winners needed to be protected, and the losers punished, so a certain "Company" was born, a seemingly faceless organization which managed The Lottery:

"The Company (thus it began to be known at that time) was forced to take measures to protect the winners, who could not collect their prizes unless nearly the entire amount of the fines was already collected. The Company brought suit against the losers: the judge condemned them to pay the original fine plus costs or to spend a number of days in jail. Every loser chose jail, so as to defraud the Company. It was from this initial bravado of a few men that the all- powerful position of the Company—its ecclesiastical, metaphysical strength—was derived."

The stakes kept getting higher and higher, and people were getting more and more anxious as a result (sound familiar?):

"The just anxiety of all, poor and rich alike, to participate equally in the lottery, inspired an indignant agitation, the memory of which the years have not erased."

But then, naturally, as the stakes went up, chaos ensued: more crime, more blood, more conspiracies, more hatred among individuals. The solution? The Company gained more public power to bring more order. "This unification was necessary, given the vastness and complexity of the new operations".

I like how Borges alludes to the modern bureaucratic language in this passage:

"Incredibly enough, there were still complaints. The Company, with its habitual discretion, did not reply directly. It preferred to scribble a brief argument—which now figures among sacred scriptures—in the debris of a mask factory."

There's obvious analogies with the real world—corporations or governments with complex machineries gaining more power to control "the chaos", because, on average, people like the idea of freedom more than the actual freedom:

"Improbable as it may be, no one had until then attempted to set up a general theory of games. A Babylonian is not highly speculative. He reveres the judgments of fate, he hands his life over to them, he places his hopes, his panic terror in them, but it never occurs to him to investigate their labyrinthian laws nor the giratory spheres which disclose them."

Also, the whole of idea of our lives dictated by chance, although not original, is portrayed here as a conspiracy with a back story which has infiltrated our daily lives. In Babylon, the sale of tickets for money is abolished, and "every man participates in the sacred drawing of lots". Soon enough, the lottery becomes a metaphor for our lives—we don't willingly participate in it, we automatically participate in it by the simple act of living:

"In the second place, it forced the lottery to be secret, free, and general. The sale of tickets for money was abolished. Once initiated into the mysteries of Bel, every free man automatically participated in the sacred drawings of lots, which were carried out in the labyrinths of the gods every seventy nights and which determined every man's fate until the next exercise."

But the comedy (and absurdity) of this is that not every lottery ticket is "important", and that many "drawings" that are handed to us are absolutely insignificant (or are they?):

"There are also impersonal drawings, of undefined purpose: one drawing will decree that a sapphire from Taprobane be thrown into the waters of the Euphrates; another, that a bird be released from a tower roof; another, that a grain of sand be withdrawn (or added) to the innumerable grains on a beach. The consequences, sometimes, are terrifying."

Moreover, "the number of drawings is infinite", which means that no decision is final—life is not a movie, there is no conclusion (well, except death).

This "Company" (God? Religion? Fate? Illuminati? Google? Your Mom?) has influenced our lives in such a way that "our customs have become thoroughly impregnated by chance." And it's true in our lives as well, just ask any stock broker—they believe in magic numbers that always change, because they yell and make serious faces and make deals and stuff (*broker voice*: "those magic numbers are real dude, it's all real, profits brotha, profiiiiitsssss")

But then, in typical Borguesian self-irony, the (unreliable) narrator suggests that maybe this story is bullshit after all:

"I myself, in making this hasty declaration, have falsified or invented some grandeur, some atrocity; perhaps, too, a certain mysterious monotony. . . ."

Got to love how Borges builds intricate worlds in a short amount of time then trolls the reader at the end with "meh, maybe not". Ha, what a guy.

"This silent functioning, comparable to that of God, gives rise to all manner of conjectures. One of them, for instance, abominably insinuates that the Company is eternal and that it will last until the last night of the world, when the last god annihilates the cosmos. Still another conjecture declares that the Company is omnipotent, but that it exerts its influence only in the most minute matters: in a bird's cry, m the shades of rust and the hues of dust, in the cat naps of dawn. There is one conjecture, spoken from the mouths of masked heresiarchs, to the effect that the Company has never existed and never will. A conjecture no less vile argues that it is indifferently inconsequential to affirm or deny the reality of the shadowy corporation, because Babylon is nothing but an infinite game of chance."

[Jessica 🥨 (kinda inactive rn because of school) · Rating 1 out of 5]

Why did this one make me so mad. I’ve been rage baited I fear

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

lowkey made my head hurt.

[Ram · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favourite short stories. I know it is part of Collected fictions which I read a few years ago, but I just discovered that it is also listed separately on Goodreads. I felt like I had to add a few lines of praise. Borges uses the unreliable narrator to tell a story that leaves many things unelaborated, ambiguous, but in so doing he creates infinite room for the reader to reach his or her own conclusion. The narrator gives his account with some urgency- his ship is about to sail after all- and in his attempt to be as thorough as possible, he peppers the pages with numerous references to the lottery, to chance, to God or some other all mighty power, posing questions, answering them, half-answering them, contradicting them, questioning the questions and of course, not answering them at all. A reference to Kafka is also thrown in for good measure.

I realize how inadequate my words are to summarize this masterful work. So my suggestion is to read it. Read it again. And then again..

[Nu · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very interesting short story. For me it related, In essence, that we humans have choices which we make in hopes of having meaningful or positive outcomes (or choices we take feeling odds are in our favour); but at the same time we cannot know whether this will ultimately turn out to be so or not, but some live in the perpetual fear of it turning out bad and some thrive on the hope and belief that it will turn out positive.

Each choice has an equal result, whether good or bad. It all may be interrelated or not. It all may be predestined or it may not. It could be all in illusion of ordered chaos or splendidly all made up.

Control over action and reaction could be real or not. Destiny could be predestined in a divine way or completely through chance.

Either way, the metaphorical undertone is quite interesting and makes you think. And that is what I love about reading. Therefore, 5 stars!

[Scott S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting short story. I will definitely be looking into more of Jorge Luis Borges' work.

The narration was mediocre, but perfectly bearable for the 15-20 minutes this audiobook lasted.

Update: Bumped to 4 stars. I thought of this story from time to time and had to come back for a second listen. It is a wild story.

[Manny · Rating 2 out of 5]

The actual title of this story is "The Lottery in Babylon" and not The Babylon Library. I have no idea why Goodreads has it listed as such, haha. Anyway, this short story is very detailed and can be confusing at times. Maybe it was just confusing to me because my brain is the size of a pea. 😂 It was not the most engaging read, but the theme about chance was interesting to think about. Especially, how a lot of aspects of people's lives are ruled by chance. I would rate this 2-stars.

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls · Rating 3 out of 5]

A metaphorical story about the role chance plays in our lives

[Madalyn Ekstrom · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting look into what the definition of chance and randomness is through the lens of a historic government/secret society… maybe?

[Ana Fernanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

4. Notas de La loteria de Babilonia:
Almost unreadable. En Babilonia se establecce una lotería, que gradualmente crece en poder e influencia. La corrupción de este juego del azar se centra en La Compañía; una organización que nadie sabe si existe en realidad, pero su influencia es tangible en las tragedias y triunfos de cada babilonio. Como crece la divinidad y omnipotencia de La Compañía, rumores y conjeturas (religiones) empiezan a circular entre la población. Que uno dice que La Compañía es omnipotente, que otro dice que no importa si existe o no, que otro dice que La Compañía está muerta y nosotros la matamos... ah no espera ese era Nietzsche. Bueno ustedes entienden, La Compañía es Dios, y Babilonia (la vida) "no es otra cosa que un infinito juego de azares."
Final thoughts: Honk... mi mi mi... HONK... mimimi

[Jake Fish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Plot summary:
From what I could make out, the story recounts a history of a lottery in Babylon in which the winners received money. This soon transforms - the lottery (held by The Company) begins to impose winnings beyond money (such as positions of power), and punishments for certain losers (including potentially death). The Company is loosely described as a possessing power comparable to a God and has absolute power in Babylon.
At the end, the narrator admits his account to not be fully truthful.

Thoughts:
Rather than a narrative, this feels like an exercise in mental gymnastics. More essay-like than story, I would not recommend to someone looking for an easy, comforting read. The authoritarian nature of ‘The Company’ is largely not critiqued - instead the story focuses on how ‘The Company’ achieved this power through the running of a lottery. The key theme of the story is chance, and what people are willing to risk for a chance to strike big. The success of The Company is due to their ability to exploit the Babylonians with this in mind.

An interesting thought-experiment, but lacking in plot.

[Elie Daou · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderfully thought provoking and intricate allegory of our world. Borges, in this short story, paints an absurdist Babylon where "The Company" reigns supreme. This company being nothing more than a generator of chance, issueing people their fates based on a random lottery, is a very sad but nevertheless accurate representation of the fates of men in the real world. The author takes his allegory to the extreme to better highlight the ridiculous nature of our existence while everyone follows in the beats of its drum.
The biggest drawback however is the writing, although I read a translated version, the writing struck me as overtly pompous and unnecessarily complicated. I felt as if it was written with the goal to impress the user with the author's literary abilities instead of getting a message across. This might not be true for the original but was the case for the English version.
Otherwise this is definitely a great 10 minute read, highly recommended.

[Paul LaFontaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Babylon a lottery that started as the winners getting a cash prize grows into an event where the losers are punished. As it grows, it becomes mandatory for all but a privileged few. The Company who runs the lottery is eventually seen as playing the role of a God.

Great idea and a great ending, showing us our own engagement in life's chances. There really aren't any characters or story. Another essay styled fiction. Could be a super interesting story if blown out a bit with real characters. Still worth the read.

Recommend

[Emi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another fascinating short story on how providence, I suppose, might be perceived differently when the context is altered.

Noticed one error, perhaps occurred during translation, where by referring to "tortoise and hare" (by Aesop), Borges I'm certain meant "tortoise and Achilles" (by Zeno) as he mentions this in the context of infinite divisibility of time.

[Simona · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the great lottery there are all letters of my keyboard. They were drawn with them being returned after each draw. The letters were:
T h e s t o r y t e l l i n g w a s m e d i o c r e, b u t t h e s m o o t h t r a n s i t i o n f r o m n o r m a l l o t t e r y t o a l i f e m e t a p h o r e w a s n i c e l y d o n e.

[Ci · Rating 3 out of 5]

I failed to see the profundity (if any) of this exercise of imagining Fate as a random generator.

[zaynah ☾ · Rating 3 out of 5]

“…because Babylon is nothing but an infinite game of chance.” Why did this give me anxiety?

[Marion · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Otra inquietud cundía en los barrios bajos. Los miembros del colegio sacerdotal multiplicaban las puestas y gozaban de todas las vicisitudes del terror y de la esperanza; los pobres (con envidia razonable o inevitable) se sabían excluidos de ese vaivén, notoriamente delicioso. El justo anhelo de que todos, pobres y ricos, participasen por igual en la lotería, inspiró una indignada agitación, cuya memoria no han desdibujado los años.”

Equality, especially equality of opportunity, is a concept that is very important to me and which I try to fight for as much as I can. This de-elitization of the lottery was necessary for Babylonians, to give an illusion of this — you could lose everything or become a millionaire in one day, the lottery acting as an “invisible hand”. But how far is human greed able to go? Does our fight for equality come from a place of general consensus for a societal well-being? Which dilemmas are we facing today that, although giving the impression that we will all be better off, will diminish communities and create an ever growing gap? And where do we stop our desire for adrenaline and excitement before it produces horrible consequences, and makes us lose our liberty?

I was wondering if this lottery was not only a reiteration of the centuries-old Roman concept of “bread and games”. Does the lottery act as a distraction for more pressing problems, a tool used to give Babylon inhabitants a sense of purpose, of belonging, as if they, as individuals, could make a change in the structure of their hierarchy, without ever questioning the power above them. They give up their liberty and choice to elect by adhering to this scheme, but seem to do so with great pleasure. They are happy to avoid the bad outcomes of the lottery, whereas those outcomes could have been avoided by not participating — but where’s the thrill in that?

It is quite frightening to realise how pervasive such extreme ideas and institutions are, and how seductive they prove to be, and the power groupthink has on us — which has only been confirmed by one totalitarian regime after another. Maybe we would all rather be equal in misery.

“Ese funcionamiento silencioso, comparable al de Dios, provoca toda suerte de conjeturas. Alguna abominablemente insinúa que hace ya siglos que no existe la Compañía y que el sacro desorden de nuestras vidas es puramente hereditario, tradicional; otra la juzga eterna y enseña que perdurará hasta la última noche, cuando el último dios anonade el mundo. Otra declara que la Compañía es omnipotente, pero que sólo influye en cosas minúsculas: en el grito de un pájaro, en los matices de la herrumbre y del polvo, en los entresueños del alba. Otra, por boca de heresiarcas enmascarados, que no ha existido nunca y no existirá. Otra, no menos vil, razona que es indiferente afirmar o negar la realidad de la tenebrosa corporación, porque Babilonia no es otra cosa que un infinito juego de azares.”

Borges was especially sneaky in the denouement, leaving a space open to make us believe that the Company might still be among us today, but just like people back then who lost its primary meaning and transformed it into an almost political institution, we integrated it into the very fibres of our existence, so much so that we forgot about it. That is when it is at the apogee of its power. But its beginning comes from a place of hybris from men, we create these human-like god images to give ourselves the sensation that we control everything, even problems too complex to anticipate. This Company-god image reminded me of deterministic religions, where you are predestined to have your life go a certain way, no matter the actions that you take. They are freed from responsibility and having to answer for their actions.

A plot turn I would have added would be to show the extend this responsibility-free lifestyle could have led to. Could some extreme acts have been committed, and then blamed on the Company? How would they have confronted this chaos?

On a side note, Borges’ writing fascinates me. His complex intertwining of mathematics, philosophy and literary references, and historical questioning, which can prove to be confusing and even contrary sometimes (rings a bell from the activities of the Company?). The very subtle placement of Qaphqa made me smile.

The last question I have is: why did the narrator of this story decide to leave Babylon?

[Tracey · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars

Notes from my seminar class, hope this can help someone in the future in a pinch ❤️

Science Fiction and Society: Going Viral

-storytelling fables as fact, mythology
-viral in the sense that stories change and mutant as time goes on, different "strains" of the same story
-The Company = Big Pharma?, profits from the virus of the lottery?
-start of the lottery was almost altruistic then quickly devolved into chaos with more losers than winners
-motivation to win increases when someone loses; not just loses but has to in spectacular fashion; punishments increase with the losing draw
-in the end, it feels that The Company is a hell of the people's own making, and they've made themselves slaves to it; no one can verify if it's real or not, but the belief keeps The Company and The Lottery alive; I think it shows that the truth is subjective and does not mean fact
-the narrator is not unbiased and seems to believe that people are the problem, not The Company or Lottery itself; are any narrators to be trusted if a story is told through their perspective; he tries to give all the facts of The Lottery but acknowledges that he leaves out details
-to me, the narrator is Borges himself, so their opinions are one and the same; if the story was told in third person and omnipotent like The Company, I could see the narrator and author separately

[Gabe G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another creative masterstroke! The slow evolution of a simple lottery into an all-encompassing religion was a prodigiously inventive idea. I think about halfway through I got the idea, that at some point the complexity, abstraction, and secrecy of the lottery system would eventually grow so monstrous that it became indistinguishable from the actions of God. It takes on the air of "last Thursdayism," in that it becomes an unfalsifiable worldview and a wholly useless concept, sustained by faith alone. It may take on a Kafkaesque quality where at any time a verdict, or a change of lot, might emerge out of the aether, in the form of some men coming to your house and announcing your execution, much like poor Josef K of Kafka's Trial. But when this no longer happens, when the lottery no longer has its avatars in the form of mortal men who bear its banners, then when all the actions of the universe and men are attributed to the verdicts of the lottery company, a new god has been erected. It's a pretty fascinating elevation of the banal to the supreme and sublime, and what makes it especially compelling is how perfectly plausible every evolutionary step of the lottery company actually was.

[Mariè · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been having the best and worst of times exploring Borges, this begins as a basic game of chance. you buy a ticket, and if your number is drawn, you win or lose something.
It's clear, structured, voluntary and it operates like any lottery. Simply:cause → effect... but that's only at first where everything is transparent and understandable.a simple gamble. A clear risk... and then I read it again and it started evolving into something vast! Huge yet secretive at the same time which made it feel suffocating (in a good way) and even metaphysical.Punishments are introduced, then we're affected even without buying a ticket! It felt like being lost and panicked in an unfamiliar space where somehow everyone is part of the lottery yet no one is at the same time, we don't know if events are chance, fate, punishment, or manipulation resulting in this universe becoming indistinguishable and blurry, everything is so entwined with every day life and you just don't know what's real and what's manipulated! If it's random or if reality itself is made to be random or actually if nothing is.
At first glance it's very much simple in structure but I do advice you to read and re read as the impact if insane!

[Victoria Prunici · Rating 5 out of 5]

Borges ' ecriture is so very much magnetic. Once you start reading, his book just follows you everywhere on Earth and in the Universe of your mind...

Si iarăși #borges

Dar altfel, de data asta.

A trebuit sa ajung in prag de 4 decenii( fara "5 min") implinite, ca sa simt magnetismul scriiturii acestui monstru sacru al literaturii universale.

L-am descoperit pe la 21 de ani. Il citeam si nu intelegeam de ce fac asta. Conexiune zero. Mi-au trebuit inca aprox 2 decenii ca sa găsesc raspunsul la acel "de ce".

Acum sunt in cautare de mai mult Borges. L-as citi in mai multe limbi. Sunt curioasa daca va persista același magnetism...

Lectura plăcută, borgesienilor!

Iar celor care inca nu l-au descoperit, aventura placuta sa aveți!

🍎🩸
#jorgeluisborges
#thelotteryinbabylon
#aleph
#babylon

[Julieta Zamalvide · Rating 5 out of 5]

En un principio vi un cierto paralelismo con el gobierno, que es si no una maquina de miseria y virtud pedida a gritos por el hombre? Pero en las ultimas paginas comprendi su mas estrecha relacion con la religion, con la idea de un Dios que elije el destinto de cada uno, que elije nuestro hacer como so fuera un derecho. Que hasta en nuestro mas ondo sufirimeinto debemos tomarlo como un privilegio, algo secreto, intangible pero indudablemente exsistente si solo como una mentira. Mas haya de los paralelismos con el mundo real, es indiscutible la habilidad de escribir fantasia de Borges, su pasion por conformar un mundo al que tenemos accseso a medias pero que igual se dislumbra completo

[Marvin Silvera · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nuevamente Borges nos presenta una idea o concepto filosófico que es desarrollado a través de una narrativa, dejando de lado la posible perspectiva política del relato, el mismo podría servir como metáfora de la vida, una existencia basada en la aleatoriedad, una lotería universal originada en Babilonia cuyas ramificaciones alcanzan y dominan cada aspecto de nuestras vidas y de la cual todos nosotros ya somos parte, desde nuestro nacimiento hasta nuestra muerte, pues el azar así lo ha decidido.

[Justin Hamm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great short story, effective within 16 pages of evolving a simple lottery into a whirlwind of paranoid masses and secret agents and fictional histories taking command over our lives, and interestingly all motivated originally by public appeal.

My favorite sentence- "Instead, it (The Company) chose to scrawl in the trash heap of a mask factory a brief explanation, which is now part of holy writ."

[Joe Lawrence · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stylistically like Edgar Allen Poe:

"I have but little time remaining; we are told that the ship is about to set sail-- but I will try to explain... the Lottery is a periodic infusion of chaos into the cosmos..."

lots of dramatic explaining with no plot or characters so the narrator is a disembodied voice. The style might best be read aloud.

[Josh Quests · Rating 1 out of 5]

1 star because I wish that it's more of a story than a commentary. It feels like an essay read, but I can tell the message is valuable, it just didnt grip me so I can't tell if I learned anything. My takeaway is that there's always a small chance, or a small statistical probability, right? So what's so bad about it? The thought that anything can happen can be comforting and exhilarating.

[Jake Ignatowicz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this was ok, I'm a fan (somewhat) of JLB, but this story seemed a little anticlimactic. Like, he builds up this whole world only for nothing to happen in it? it's like a strange thought experiment that didn't necessarily need to happen. I appreciate the influences this has had on society though. I don't know, I'm glad I read it I guess. 3/5 stars from this guy.