--- product_id: 3524803 title: "The Lottery and Other Stories (FSG Classics)" price: "R861" currency: ZAR in_stock: true reviews_count: 13 url: https://www.desertcart.co.za/products/3524803-the-lottery-and-other-stories-fsg-classics store_origin: ZA region: South Africa --- # The Lottery and Other Stories (FSG Classics) **Price:** R861 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** The Lottery and Other Stories (FSG Classics) - **How much does it cost?** R861 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.co.za](https://www.desertcart.co.za/products/3524803-the-lottery-and-other-stories-fsg-classics) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description One of the most terrifying stories of the twentieth century, Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” created a sensation when it was first published in The New Yorker in 1948. "Power and haunting," and "nights of unrest" were typical reader responses. Today it is considered a classic work of short fiction, a story remarkable for its combination of subtle suspense and pitch-perfect descriptions of both the chilling and the mundane. The Lottery and Other Stories , the only collection of stories to appear during Shirley Jackson's lifetime, unites "The Lottery" with twenty-four equally unusual short stories. Together they demonstrate Jackson's remarkable range―from the hilarious to the horrible, the unsettling to the ominous―and her power as a storyteller. Review: Amazing short stories with fantastic endings - Read this book for one reaction: gasping "whaaaaaat!" or perhaps "whaaaaat?" (punctuation varies) after reading the final sentence of every story. Shirley Jackson is the indisputable master of the "whaaaaaat!/?" Some stories end ambiguously, leaving you scrambling back through the pages searching for a clue or alternately racing to open Google to read others' wise analyses. Other stories end completely and absolutely unambiguously, leaving you to question not what actually happened but to wonder how such a terrible ending could come to pass. ("The Lottery," Jackson's most famous tale, falls in the second type.) But no matter if the ending is ambiguous or unambiguous, what I want to emphasize is that Shirley Jackson knows how to end. I have now read dozens of her short stories and one of her novels and I am convinced that I know of no author who finishes every piece with such decisive flourish. It's an incredible skill, knowing how to end something. I often find short stories forgettable. Any novel of 300 pages will indubitably engrave itself in my mind by mere virtue of the hours required to read it. A story of less than 20 pages, however, is at a clear disadvantage. A short story must shock to be memorable. Luckily for us, Jackson has one setting: shock the reader. On the last page, or more often, the last sentence. But her shocking endings are of the mild, ungratuitous variety. Two of my favorite stories--"The Daemon Lover" and "Like Mother Used to Make"--finish with the protagonists questioning their sanity and autonomy. They don't run screaming to mental hospitals; rather, they stay quietly and desperately in their homes, wondering who they are and if this is--if this truly can be--their life, and to me, such an ending is much more powerful than any louder alternative. There is something so mundane to Jackson's writing, which makes the fact that most of the stories are categorized in the horror genre more, well, horrifying. Because it suggests that the quotidian is horror. Jackson is wonderfully aware of the fact that the everyday lives of the normalest of the normal are the most frightening things in the world. No need for ghosts or murderers, everything you need is right there inside of us. For Jackson, horror is the casual racism of a small New England town, the irrepressible distress of a 30 year old unmarried woman searching for a husband, the monotonous daily routine of a department store salesperson, a badly misbehaving child and his oblivious parents, the terrifying anonymity of an individual in a metropolis of millions. In short, horror is real life. These stories have a rare rereadable quality. I know that I will reread this collection for the rest of my life, and at the end of every story for the rest of my life, I will say "whaaaaat!/?" Review: Make Sure to Read to the End - At first, having read and loved The Haunting of Hill House and the Lottery, I was disappointed. The early stories, although well paced and possessed of Jackson's anthropological eye for dissecting social convention as well as her acute, Woolf like attention to a character's inner monologue, despite all this I was...bored. In the early stories, we follow the repercussions of a revealing event in a character's life. We see how the character reacts and is changed by this strange and important junction. The man you are supposed to marry doesn't show up, and you go looking for him. A single mother moves into the house you always wanted, and your friendship with her is tested and broken by racism. A literary agent, you discover that your whole life is founded on a foolish hope you had when you were young, and you don't know how else to operate, so you gather your cynicism around you as a shield, but continue to supplant one foolish hope with another. The conclusions of these stories, often about social convention, the double-sided and impossible expectations of women, the incredibly nosy and judgmental circles in which they move, ended on abrupt, depressing notes. Though I appreciated Jackson's style, pace, and unique attention to detail, it seemed to me that even the early stories ached to be...well, weirder. She had such a talent for the uncanny, the slowly building feeling of unease. My favorite stories in this collection were the stories in which Jackson got really weird with it. I gave this book 4 stars because I think any aspiring writer should read it. Jackson's way of reminding us of our frenzied, most irrational thoughts is something to be studied. The way she builds unease, the way she picks her situations, there's a lot to learn from. As a reader, my favorite stories, the weirdest ones, are: "The Witch"--acknowledgement of the dark, macabre side of the child's nature, also, very funny. "The Daemon Lover"--Kelly Link took her inspiration from Jackson, or from the Scottish ballad about James Harris, the demon lover. James Harris happens to the be the name of a man in many of the stories. The stories skirt around James Harris, or Mr. Harris, the --he's never the main character, but is often the shadowy catalyst of the story's action. Anyway, this is the story that I think represents the bridge between an anxious litfic story that wants to be uncanny, and the minute psychological shifts in a decaying psyche. "Pillar of Salt" Describes the claustrophobic, frenzied psychosis of a small-town woman in a big city. "The Tooth" My second favorite! Listen to this: "It was when she stepped a little aside to let someone else get to the basin and stood up and glanced into the mirror that she realized with a slight stinging shock that she had no idea which face was hers." "The Lottery" Nothing to be said about this one that hasn't already been said. Classic, brilliant, disturbing, so disturbing, one of the cannon of greats. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #1,562,020 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #777 in Classic Literature & Fiction #1,908 in Literary Fiction (Books) #11,538 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction | | Customer Reviews | 4.2 out of 5 stars 3,991 Reviews | ## Images ![The Lottery and Other Stories (FSG Classics) - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/91LEmJaDfDL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Amazing short stories with fantastic endings *by J***L on May 25, 2014* Read this book for one reaction: gasping "whaaaaaat!" or perhaps "whaaaaat?" (punctuation varies) after reading the final sentence of every story. Shirley Jackson is the indisputable master of the "whaaaaaat!/?" Some stories end ambiguously, leaving you scrambling back through the pages searching for a clue or alternately racing to open Google to read others' wise analyses. Other stories end completely and absolutely unambiguously, leaving you to question not what actually happened but to wonder how such a terrible ending could come to pass. ("The Lottery," Jackson's most famous tale, falls in the second type.) But no matter if the ending is ambiguous or unambiguous, what I want to emphasize is that Shirley Jackson knows how to end. I have now read dozens of her short stories and one of her novels and I am convinced that I know of no author who finishes every piece with such decisive flourish. It's an incredible skill, knowing how to end something. I often find short stories forgettable. Any novel of 300 pages will indubitably engrave itself in my mind by mere virtue of the hours required to read it. A story of less than 20 pages, however, is at a clear disadvantage. A short story must shock to be memorable. Luckily for us, Jackson has one setting: shock the reader. On the last page, or more often, the last sentence. But her shocking endings are of the mild, ungratuitous variety. Two of my favorite stories--"The Daemon Lover" and "Like Mother Used to Make"--finish with the protagonists questioning their sanity and autonomy. They don't run screaming to mental hospitals; rather, they stay quietly and desperately in their homes, wondering who they are and if this is--if this truly can be--their life, and to me, such an ending is much more powerful than any louder alternative. There is something so mundane to Jackson's writing, which makes the fact that most of the stories are categorized in the horror genre more, well, horrifying. Because it suggests that the quotidian is horror. Jackson is wonderfully aware of the fact that the everyday lives of the normalest of the normal are the most frightening things in the world. No need for ghosts or murderers, everything you need is right there inside of us. For Jackson, horror is the casual racism of a small New England town, the irrepressible distress of a 30 year old unmarried woman searching for a husband, the monotonous daily routine of a department store salesperson, a badly misbehaving child and his oblivious parents, the terrifying anonymity of an individual in a metropolis of millions. In short, horror is real life. These stories have a rare rereadable quality. I know that I will reread this collection for the rest of my life, and at the end of every story for the rest of my life, I will say "whaaaaat!/?" ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Make Sure to Read to the End *by S***B on October 4, 2016* At first, having read and loved The Haunting of Hill House and the Lottery, I was disappointed. The early stories, although well paced and possessed of Jackson's anthropological eye for dissecting social convention as well as her acute, Woolf like attention to a character's inner monologue, despite all this I was...bored. In the early stories, we follow the repercussions of a revealing event in a character's life. We see how the character reacts and is changed by this strange and important junction. The man you are supposed to marry doesn't show up, and you go looking for him. A single mother moves into the house you always wanted, and your friendship with her is tested and broken by racism. A literary agent, you discover that your whole life is founded on a foolish hope you had when you were young, and you don't know how else to operate, so you gather your cynicism around you as a shield, but continue to supplant one foolish hope with another. The conclusions of these stories, often about social convention, the double-sided and impossible expectations of women, the incredibly nosy and judgmental circles in which they move, ended on abrupt, depressing notes. Though I appreciated Jackson's style, pace, and unique attention to detail, it seemed to me that even the early stories ached to be...well, weirder. She had such a talent for the uncanny, the slowly building feeling of unease. My favorite stories in this collection were the stories in which Jackson got really weird with it. I gave this book 4 stars because I think any aspiring writer should read it. Jackson's way of reminding us of our frenzied, most irrational thoughts is something to be studied. The way she builds unease, the way she picks her situations, there's a lot to learn from. As a reader, my favorite stories, the weirdest ones, are: "The Witch"--acknowledgement of the dark, macabre side of the child's nature, also, very funny. "The Daemon Lover"--Kelly Link took her inspiration from Jackson, or from the Scottish ballad about James Harris, the demon lover. James Harris happens to the be the name of a man in many of the stories. The stories skirt around James Harris, or Mr. Harris, the --he's never the main character, but is often the shadowy catalyst of the story's action. Anyway, this is the story that I think represents the bridge between an anxious litfic story that wants to be uncanny, and the minute psychological shifts in a decaying psyche. "Pillar of Salt" Describes the claustrophobic, frenzied psychosis of a small-town woman in a big city. "The Tooth" My second favorite! Listen to this: "It was when she stepped a little aside to let someone else get to the basin and stood up and glanced into the mirror that she realized with a slight stinging shock that she had no idea which face was hers." "The Lottery" Nothing to be said about this one that hasn't already been said. Classic, brilliant, disturbing, so disturbing, one of the cannon of greats. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Classic *by K***K on September 4, 2022* Do you like words? Do you like reading them? If so - this book is for you! It's got thousands of words! And if that was not enough dear reader, well - you are not going to believe it -- they are put together in sentences, which then become paragraphs. That's right - these words are put together so that they express ideas and concepts, which tell a story. This book in fact contains MANY STORIES. What a value! In all seriousness, this book is full of great stories that you will just zip through. It's that true marvel - entertaining, engaging writing that expresses real ideas - with empathy for its characters and revulsion at the traps they find themselves in. --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.co.za/products/3524803-the-lottery-and-other-stories-fsg-classics](https://www.desertcart.co.za/products/3524803-the-lottery-and-other-stories-fsg-classics) --- *Product available on Desertcart South Africa* *Store origin: ZA* *Last updated: 2026-05-28*