Starting from the everyday phenomenon of Taiwan’s national lottery, Ghost Lotto hones in on the various forms of the human desire to strike it rich, and the local superstitions and religious beliefs concerning wealth and good fortune. Beneath the everyman dream of overnight wealth lies a range of forces that distort and defile human nature: misfortune, delusion, vanity, jealousy, and desire.
Greed is never far from these, but what is their true source? Beginning in simple actions motivated by greed, Ghost Lotto builds a tightly coupled story that expands à la the butterfly effect, to incorporate numerous other facets of human nature. An impulse moves one character to action, only to produce a tragedy in the life of another, and the ultimate truth isn’t revealed until the very end, leaving readers to wonder: what is more horrifying, the ghosts and demons of superstitious belief, or the evil that lurks in our own nature?