The Lottery in Babylon
A man waiting to board a ship gives a short history of Babylon, where a harmless raffle was reformed to carry penalties as well as prizes, then made compulsory, then made free. Run by an invisible Company through drawings that branch into further drawings, it comes to govern every accident of a citizen's life. Borges's compact account of a bureaucracy becoming indistinguishable from fate.
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Closest analogues
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- 64% · 9 shared
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- 57% · 9 shared
- 57% · 9 shared
- 57% · 8 shared