Hi, I'm Lovar Burton and this is Lovar Burton Reads.

In every episode I hand pick a different piece of short fiction and I read it to you.

The only thing these stories have in common is that I love them and I hope you will too.

Just in case you might have missed it, Lovar Burton Reads is hitting the road, starting

Halloween. I had such an amazing time traveling around and doing live tapings of the podcast

this past spring with authors and local musicians. So come on out and bring a friend to shows

in these selected cities. Washington, DC is where I began. Then on up into Toronto, Ontario,

one of my favorite cities, back down to Brooklyn looking very much forward to being there.

Collingswood, New Jersey, that's the Philly area for folks wondering why Collingswood,

well because it's near Philadelphia. Then we're going to Boston, then Austin, Texas,

Dallas, and then Atlanta to complete that Southwest's kind of swing. So check out Lovar

Burtonpodcast.com slash tour for updates and ticket links. Now, I am really excited to read

something for you today by Lovie Tidar. I've been reading and enjoying his stories for years.

Lovie is a heavy hitter in the sci-fi and fantasy world. His novel Osama won the world fantasy

award and this was in a year when it was pitted against books by Stephen King and George R.

R. Martin. No less. So Lovie is no slouch. He was raised on a caboose in Israel. He's also lived in

South Africa, Laos, the Pacific Island of Vanuatu, and the UK where he currently resides.

Though our story today is set in China, you might catch some references to some of the other places

Lovie has lived and visited over the years. Listen for the foods, the currency, the names,

the stories. The story follows Isham, a man who sells lottery tickets in the city of Iwo. Now Iwo

is a real life market city with the largest wholesale market in the world. It's trading history

goes back to the 1600s and by setting it in Iwo, we get this interesting cross section of people

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